


the new romantics

by taylorswift



Category: Actor RPF, Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, The Hunger Games (Movies) RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, I make no promises - anything and everything has the potential of occurring, Multi, Slow Burn, all you need to know is that this story is one of my favorite things I've ever done
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-08-22 08:35:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 56,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16594502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylorswift/pseuds/taylorswift
Summary: Somewhere, someone once said that the best things in life were free, and Isabelle figured that she could agree with that sentiment. Little did she know that she'd actually find those things two thousand miles away in the sunny city of Los Angeles.ORthe college au that absolutely nobody asked for, but no one has ever taken it upon themselves to write, so i, the champion of this ship, decided to do what must be done. friendship, insecurities, late nights of every kind, regret, romance, angst, and lots of laughs ahead.





	1. when we first dropped our bags on apartment floors

**Author's Note:**

> *effie trinket voice* welcome, welcome! it's ya girl em, back once again with a new fic that i'm keeping my fingers crossed i'll actually finish, for once in my sad little life. i got this idea a few months back after watching a buzzfeed video of all things, and ever since then, i've been taking notes on and off, bothering amanda and gracie with headcanon texts at unholy hours, and staring at the word doc to make the words themselves appear on the screen. i can't promise you any sort of earth-shattering plotline with this bad boy or that it'll be some sort of groundbreaking new territory in the world of fic, because that is not what this is. this is a simple college au that is 98% character driven and is honestly just a story that exists because i need an escape from my crazy ass life at the moment, and this world seems a little more ideal at the moment. i'm so fucking in love with the versions of these characters, probably the most excited about them than i've ever been in almost seven years of writing them, and i really hope that you love them too. there's not really a set direction at the moment, but that's the most fun, sometimes? so i invite you to come put your life on pause for a little bit and jump into this world with me - all you have to do is kick back and relax. and pray i actually keep with it until the end. also, another little fyi: i don't go to usc. i don't really know anybody (personally) who goes to usc. literally everything i know is from what usc posts on their website. let's use our imaginations, shall we?
> 
> if you're interested, here's the link to the spotify playlist that's inspired/inspired by this story. y'all know i can't ever be tamed when it comes to playlist making. https://open.spotify.com/user/heliophilix/playlist/5L5AO53L9nyUZOj3Y0r7T3?si=ogquvjAUSfy6W77nNeWRMQ
> 
> please take a second after you read before you click away and leave a comment, i love hearing what you guys think (and fanfic is a group effort, after all). chapter title comes from taylor swift's 'welcome to new york.' you can find me on instagram @tributediaries if you want to come rant about your feels in excess. happy reading. xx
> 
> ps: in case you're curious about isabelle and kalia's tattoos: https://www.styless.co//wp-content/uploads/2017/05/10-Small-Tattoos-Small-Meaningful-Symbols-Ideas-2017051069.jpg

The summer after graduation seemed to fade the quickest – or, at least, that was what Isabelle Fuhrman thought.

She was no stranger to a summer flying underneath her feet. In fact, she’d grown used to the way that July’s heat melted individual days into clumps of weeks, giving her no real concept of time save for the increase in back-to-school commercials interrupting songs on the radio the closer they inched to the end. This summer, however, had been entirely different. If graduation had been the end of a chapter and college the start of a new one, then the summer standing between the two was nothing more than a page break.

Summers previous hadn’t been as bittersweet, but other summers hadn’t been spent going through a laundry list of goodbyes and sorting her entire life into boxes and suitcases, either. Other summers had been stuffed full of adventures in the shotgun seat accompanied by her small group of friends, going on runs before the sun turned the sky colors reminiscent of cotton candy in its varied shades of blush pink and blue, sitting by the pool with a glass of her mom’s rosemary lemonade and a new book. They didn’t feel like some kind of drawn out event of closure or genesis. They just felt like summer.

Isabelle still had a few days left of her summer, each one dwindling away faster than the one before it. Truthfully, she was unsure of how to spend them. There was plenty she could do, of course, but each possibility sounded less ideal than the next. Fortunately for her, Kalia had already dictated what she’d spend her Friday night doing, texting her and letting her know within a thinly veiled “come or else” threat that Annie Thurman was throwing a bonfire out in the woods behind her parent’s house as the last hurrah before the first of the local college classes started.

Being a jock all throughout high school and keeping the company she did meant Isabelle landed somewhere right on the border of the high school upper echelon’s bubble of exclusivity, which gained her a fair share of party invitations. She rarely put them to use; Alpharetta parties hadn’t necessarily been her idea of fun. Kids drank too excessively, the people curating playlists had horrible taste in the music they blared at unbearable volumes, some new seed of drama would manage to take root and blossom in record time, and the cops were almost always called to break up the fun. Isabelle liked the rules too much to ever get into any kind of trouble, especially the kind of trouble that could stand between her and a sports scholarship. If she ever went to any kind of party, it was the one she knew would get looked over if noise complaints and reports of underage drinking came in, and saw as few trainwrecks as possible.

However, senior year was over. There was very little left for Isabelle to lose, what with being so close to the date on her plane ticket. She also wasn’t looking to face Kalia’s wrath by skipping what would probably be their last time together for the foreseeable future.

She found a parking spot at the end of Annie’s street nearly forty-five minutes later than the time Kalia had given her, letting the faint sounds of conversation and music carry her into the woods. It came as no surprise that Kalia herself was waiting on the outskirts of the party – presumably for her – with one hand on her hip and the other clutching to a red cup.

“About time, Fuhrman,” she drawled accusingly, wielding a glare like a knife that cut straight through Isabelle.

Both of Isabelle’s hands lifted in mock arrest. “Sorry. Got caught in traffic.” It was a terrible and blatant lie, of which she and Kalia were entirely aware.

Kalia snorted as her free hand wrapped around Isabelle’s wrist, tugging her along behind her. “Yeah.  _Okay.”_  Isabelle could see her hardened expression start to break into a smile, her own lips curling upwards in amusement.

The two of them didn’t meet until their sixth-grade year when all of the elementary schools in their zone fed into the single middle school. They had looked frighteningly similar at age eleven, and their friendship had been cemented after their brief stint of thinking they were long lost siblings (even going so far as to confront and interrogate their parents about it). In reality, they were more different than they were alike. Kalia was more feminine than Isabelle, always in the business of fashion and makeup and using Isabelle as her own human doll from time to time, whereas Isabelle was more athletic and could only ever get Kalia interested in cheerleading. Kalia was where Isabelle found most of her popularity; there were no strangers in Kalia’s world, her social butterfly nature almost effortless and her charisma hard to ignore. Isabelle, on the other hand, was more independent. She didn’t need the constant presence of other people the way that Kalia seemed to.

Isabelle had other friends, but they were all acquaintances compared to Kalia. Kalia was like family. They’d gone on each other’s family vacations in the summer as the other’s plus one, Kalia had sat on her bathroom floor with her and stroked her hair after she came home from junior prom sobbing until nearly four in the morning, and right after graduation, they went to get matching tattoos. They now each had a sunshine with half of the circle emboldened to form a crescent moon, a way of carrying the other and their friendship with them wherever they went next.

They wove their way through the crowd with a sense of purpose, Kalia keeping the two in motion no matter how many people smiled and called to either her or Isabelle. It made sense once Isabelle saw JP leaning up against the side of the old abandoned barn that was infamous around town for hosting parties and frisky teenagers looking for a place to hide. His face brightened at the sight of them, both arms extending.

“So nice of you to join us, Iz,” he teased, tucking her underneath his arm and handing her the red cup resting in his opposite hand. “For a minute there, I thought you were a no-show, and that Kalia was gonna drag me by the ear to my car to go pick you up.”

Isabelle’s eyes darted over to Kalia, and she shrugged in response. “What?” she countered. “This is the last hurrah until December at the least, and I’m not going to let my last in-the-flesh memory of you be seeing your full ass when you and Patrick Swayze over here thought it’d be a great idea to recreate Dirty Dancing.”

“Just ‘cause you weren’t having the time of your life doesn’t mean the rest of us were, Lia. Especially when it comes to getting a look at Isabelle’s ass.” Isabelle’s jaw went slack, her elbow jamming backwards into JP’s ribs. “Hey! I’m defending you here,” he whined.

“Then please don’t ever go into law.”

JP hadn’t come into their small inner circle until eighth grade, befriending Isabelle first in their advanced English class and then getting introduced to Kalia through her. He’d had a crush on Isabelle and wanted to be fully immersed in her world so he stood a fraction of a chance, doing whatever he possibly could to gain her attention. He constantly made her laugh, the two of them passing notes in English when Shakespeare got boring, avid discussions scribbled down on the back of their syllabi about Star Wars or sharing a PopTart from the vending machine when they knew lunch that day was one to be avoided at all costs. After about six months of pining and a really awkward conversation once Isabelle finally saw the crush that Kalia had been doing her damnedest to inform her of, she and JP concluded that they were better off as friends.

Better off as friends they were; for the next five years, Kalia, JP, and Isabelle were a tight knit threesome. There were no existing secrets between them (except the fact that Kalia and JP were both crushing on one another, a fact Isabelle wasn’t sure that either of them even knew about themselves), where one went the other two were usually close behind, and above all else, they always picked one another. Over everyone else.

In the depths of Isabelle’s chest, the reminder that this was their last time together for a while left a sting that spiderwebbed off into her bloodstream. They were all headed different places; JP was moving into the city to go to Georgia State, Kalia was studying abroad in Germany, and Isabelle was headed for sunny Los Angeles. The longest the three of them had ever spent apart was the two weeks in tenth grade when both Isabelle and Kalia came down with the flu and were on quarantine.

The night started to slip by Isabelle the more rum and coke she got into her system, JP getting in early practice on the part-time bartender gig he for some reason always dreamed of having. People she hadn’t seen since turning their tassels came up every so often to give her hugs and well-wishes for college, leaving just as quickly as they approached. Small talk only went so far, in Isabelle’s opinion, and for the majority of the time, she hated it. Especially when all it ever led up to was a goodbye.

Hours weaved together, spent dancing to select songs that someone had playing from the speaker system they’d set up on the bed of their truck and reminiscing on all of their greatest moments. Even slightly buzzed, Isabelle was still able to remember more that had happened to them in the last five years compared to Kalia, who could barely remember the events of last week.

“I swear,” she contended stiffly. “On your freakin’ dog, Isabelle, that I did not do that.”

Isabelle was hunched over at the middle holding her throbbing ribs, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes as she shook her head vehemently. “Lia, I swear to you, you did. You chased him around the gym for ten minutes before throwing one of your shoes at his head yelling — and I quote,  _‘That came from Victoria’s Secret! DROP IT!’_ Where else do you think that you got the VS Demon nickname from?”

Kalia’s face scrunched up in feigned contempt, sticking her tongue out at Isabelle.

“Well,” JP chimed in as he downed the last of his drink. “Let’s just all thank our lucky stars that Kalia isn’t looking to be the next Mother Teresa and just wants to be a mo- _del_.” His elongation of the last word in a sing-song voice elicited a tiny smile out of Kalia, his own face breaking out into a grin. “God, Li, you remember that phase of yours where Iz and I had to sit through hours of you trying on clothes for your potential outfits of the week?”

One of her shoulders lifted in a half-shrug. “I needed opinions, who else was I gonna ask? And now look at me, heading off to hopefully get a modeling career started while I major in…well, something. It’s all come full circle.”

The air seemed to shift after that statement rolled off her tongue, a weight pressing the atmosphere down. They hadn’t done much discussing about how they were going to handle the end, if they were even going to acknowledge it at all. All summer, it seemed, they’d been piling up more adventures on top of the inevitable to distract them, but there were suddenly no more late-night movie escapades or pool days at Isabelle’s to hide behind. And now here they were, face to face with the silent ache in her heart that Isabelle had personally spent nearly four months staving off.

JP, ever the mind reader, was quick to shake his head and dismantle the moment of silence the girls had fallen prey to (and the now visible frown on Isabelle’s face). “Girls. Come on.”

As if the gods of timing couldn’t be crueler, the playlist switched the up-tempo song into a ballad. In the pit of her stomach, Isabelle could feel the rum and coke start to settle unevenly. “What?” Kalia muttered. “Isabelle’s leaving on Tuesday, and I’m leaving Saturday. This is it.”

“Kalia, you act like we’re going off to war.”

“I’m going off to Germany – who knows? Maybe they’ll incite the third World War. Wouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody seeing as how they started the first two.”

JP rolled his eyes. “You ever heard of this thing called FaceTime?” he refuted. “Look, I know you’re just pouring on the dramatics because you’re sad.”

“Well of course I’m sad, you moron,” Kalia retorted, shifting closer to where JP was standing. He raised his arm, draping it across her shoulders. Isabelle had to bite back the scoff that threatened to ruin the moment; when the two of them would clue in was beyond a mystery to her. “We’re not starting back another year of high school in a week. We’re…going off. Being adults. Leaving each other and starting new lives.”

“Maybe,” JP agreed. “But we’re getting out of this small town that was never any good for any of us. We’re going off and starting the lives we were supposed to have, doing the shit we actually want to do. The only place any of us can go from here is up. And just because we’re not gonna see each other every day doesn’t mean this friendship is over by any means.” He motioned for Isabelle to come closer, his other arm resting over her shoulders and pulling her in close. “You guys are always gonna be my best girls, no matter if you want to get rid of me or not. It’ll just be…different.”

“And if different means something we don’t want for it to?” Isabelle challenged.

JP shrugged. “Then I guess we cross that bridge if we ever get there.”

“Maybe you should change your major to something that involves motivational speaking,” Kalia mused as JP kissed the side of Isabelle’s head. “I didn’t know you were capable of such sincerity.”

“I’m capable of more than you’d think, Prescott.”

“O- _kay_ ,” Isabelle sang disarmingly, grabbing at Kalia with her free arm to draw her into a group hug. “Let’s just enjoy our last night together with as few sexual innuendos as possible, shall we?”

JP barked out a laugh as he reached up to ruffle the top of Kalia’s hair, Kalia’s attempts of getting away all in vain. “C’mon, Izzy. Just ‘cause it’s a new beginning doesn’t mean everything’s gonna hit the dusty trail. Some things will never change.”

Isabelle hoped that that was true.

* * *

Jacqueline Emerson had been looking forward to college since the first day she'd stepped foot into the halls of her high school freshman year. She knew that she was destined for bigger and better things, even bigger than the nation's capital and even better than the prestigious private school right outside of DC that her parents had enrolled her in. It might not have been the stateliest accomplishment to ever grace an Emerson, with a father serving as an US Ambassador and twin sisters that were prodigies, but her acceptance to USC was perhaps one of the greatest things to fall in her lap.

USC was the first thing that would be unequivocally and solely hers. None of her family members were alumni. No one knew who her father was, nothing made her special, and she couldn't have been more excited about it. This was her chance to be someone new. Someone that she wanted to be, whoever that happened to be. 

It was why she had asked that her mom be the only person to go with her to move-in day. She didn't want the circus accompanying her and potentially throwing her carefully calculated plan off on the first damn day, but fortunately, her family wasn't on that was big on doing everything as a cohesive family unit. The twins would already be back to school, and her father didn't know what a vacation was, so the request hadn't been met with opposition.

Step one in figuring out a way not to drag the prestige and reputation of the Emerson name along with her to college? Check.

Her mom's parents lived out in Orange County and they'd been more than willing to open up their home to Jacqueline and her mother for the week leading up to USC's official move-in day on Wednesday. They'd spent the weekend going shopping for the things that had been too big or expensive to ship cross-country (Jacqueline didn't know that there was such a thing as 'too expensive' when it came to her family, but she supposed everyone learned something new every day), Jacqueline thrumming with excitement. As far as she knew, the California sunshine had already started to seep into her skin and make all the difference.

The sun was just barely beginning to light up the sky when Kimberly and Jacqueline set off for Los Angeles, the floorboards to ceiling of her Grandpop's SVU crammed tight with all of her belongings.  _This is it, Jackie,_ she thought as they made their way up I-5.  _This is the start of something new. The start of the rest of your life._

God, did that sound good when she thought about it.

Jackie came from a family that believed in early arrivals, so they'd made it to the Village almost an hour earlier than the slated check-in times. "Well, here we are," Kimberly mused as they circled around the block, looking for some sort of sign that would designate where they could find parking. She glanced over at her daughter once she'd pulled up to a stoplight, offering her a smile. "You excited?"

"Yeah," was Jackie's almost absentminded response, gazing out of the windshield as she tried to drink everything in. LA was no DC by any means, nor was it the suburb she'd grown up in. Coming all the way out to California for school was the last thing anybody had expected out of her; it was supposed to have been an Ivy League or Georgetown, something that would command the same respect that everybody else's achievements and alma maters did. After all, Jackie was never one to stray far from the rules. She liked structure and order just like the rest of her family did. 

But she was the wild card of the bunch, destined for a greatness beyond the blazers and political debates and golden cages that she'd been kept in up until now. It was time for her to spread her wings.

By the time Kimberly was able to find a parking spot that was close to Irani, it was right at eight o'clock. Jackie went ahead to pick up her ID and room key while Kimberly was delegated to the task of finding a cart to rent and begin piling things into to take up to the third floor. 

It was sheer luck of the draw, winding up in Irani her freshman year. Her lottery time had been fairly early, allowing her to pick one of the nicer apartment buildings for housing. Just because she was going full wild card didn't mean she'd completely lost her mind and wanted to hunker down in one of the freshmen residence halls for the next two hundred-something days of her life. Her roommate had been randomly selected, another freshman who apparently had the same sort of luck – and personality – that she did. She knew the girl's name was Isabelle, that she was from Georgia, and that when it came to matching dorm-room decor, she was completely go with the flow. (Jackie had ultimately given up on that pipe dream; sure, it would have been nice to have a cohesive room, but keeping up with somebody else was a migraine in the making.)

So far, there was no sign of Isabelle. Jackie was the first to the key pick-up, and even after she'd smiled a little too wide for her ID picture and traipsed back to where Grandpop's car had been parked, she was still the lone man. A tiny part of her hoped that she would belong to the statistic of people whose roommates failed to show for the first week of classes and she could continue having a room all to herself for a fraction of the room and board cost, but she knew that being stuck with Isabelle was probably better than what could've been the alternative. There was no extensive personality match-up for overflow rooming.

After finally finding her mom inside the lobby eagerly chatting up some of the RAs, they got to work unloading all of her things on her designated side of the room. Isabelle's side was still abandoned and unclaimed, and Jackie could feel her teeth start to set on edge the closer and closer they got to getting everything out of the car. It was going to be impossible to start unpacking and organizing things without having her furniture where she wanted it, and she wasn't able to move her furniture wherever she wanted it without considering any of Isabelle's thoughts, and she couldn't take Isabelle's thoughts into account if she wasn't present, and god,  _why couldn't people just be on time_ —

Right at 10:06 (Jackie knew because she checked), there was a knock on the door. With Jackie still unpacking some of her clothes and organizing them in the under-the-bed storage, Kimberly left the bedroom to go answer it. 

"Oh, thank you so much," a woman's voice sighed right as the door presumably opened, the sound of something landing on the floor right after the words left her mouth. "We didn't know if you guys were here already, and Isabelle's a slow walker these days."

Another voice piped up, slightly deeper and with a hint of a rasp to it from what Jackie could distinguish halfway up underneath her bed. "Which you're more than aware of — therefore I don't know why you sped up the minute we got out of the elevator." 

"Honey, that elevator was over capacity. If we didn't get off right when we got the chance, we'd have wound up on the five o'clock news."

"It's nice to meet you," Jackie heard her mom say. "I'm Kimberly Marteau, I'm Jacqueline's mother."

"Elina Fuhrman, and this is my daughter, Isabelle. Gosh, our girls sure did luck out on this room."

Jackie figured it was now or never when it came to joining all of the riveting conversation in the other room, even if she would have been entirely content to stay there on the floor and let the conversation eventually find its way to her. She pulled herself off of the floor and consciously tugged down on her shorts before opening the door that led out to the common area. 

Standing in the middle of the living room was her mother, of course, flanked on either side by two brunettes that Jackie swore could pass as twins upon first glance. After looking for another second, she could tell the difference between the two; Isabelle was obviously the taller one who had her hair down her back in two Dutch braids, dressed very similarly to Jackie in a t-shirt and shorts with sneakers, and her mother was the one wearing a romper, sunglasses perched on top of her head just like Kimberly’s were. 

"Oh! And here's my daughter," Kimberly rerouted the conversation right as she spotted Jackie, gesturing in her direction. Both Isabelle and her mother spun around to face her, and all Jackie could think to do was raise her hand in an awkward sort of wave. Her social skills at business-related functions? Sublime. Social skills when it came to kids her own age? Complete hit or miss.

Isabelle's mom's face lit up, bounding over to shake Jackie's hand. "Nice to meet you Jacqueline, I'm Isabelle's mom, Elina."

"Nice to meet you too, Mrs. Fuhrman," was the polite response that fell from Jackie's lips, her ever-winning smile quickly blossoming over her lips. There was no question about it, she knew how to charm adults. 

Elina was a prime example of how swift the warm-up was, instantly waving her hand around in dismissal. "Nonsense, it's Elina." 

"Hey," Isabelle chimed in softly as she stepped up behind her mother, Elina quick to slide out of the way. "I'm Isabelle." 

Jackie kept the smile up, doing her best to look much more enthused about meeting her roommate than her roommate's mom. "Jackie." Step two of finally feeling like her own person by dropping a syllable off her name and sounding more like a person rather than some sort of First Lady hopeful? Check.

Elina's hands settled over her hips as she took a sweeping glance of the room — Jackie got the impression that Elina was her kind of person, always being the one to step up and take charge any time a few seconds of pause fell over a room. Her daughter, however, was a lot harder to get a read on. "Well, we've still got a lot of stuff to bring in, so I guess we'll go ahead and head back out that way."

"You want some help?" Jackie asked, looking directly at her roommate. "I've already got all my stuff in, and I didn't want to unpack much with you not being here."

"That would be awesome," Isabelle replied earnestly. "Mom, you got the car keys on you? We're gonna have to use the honk-to-find method, because I  _know_ I don't remember where it was that I parked."

"I've got the car keys; you girls take the cart. Try not to put too much weight on your foot, sweetheart. And whatever you do, don't let go of that cart. I'm not looking to get into a brawl today." Something told Jackie that Elina was entirely serious about that, too, even if the woman did look like she'd just stepped out of a Crown and Ivy ad. 

"I'll stay up here and start sorting your bathroom things," Kimberly said, placing her hand on Jackie's shoulder as she headed back towards the bedroom.

Conversations between the two girls over the summer had been far and few in between. Jackie chalked most of that up to her not having her phone on her for the majority of the summer as she trekked around Europe, the promised graduation trip her parents had agreed upon arranging if she’d made valedictorian. It was one of the easier bargains Jackie had ever made. She liked school, and she was good at it, too.

Walking down the hallway towards the elevator beside Isabelle, Jackie could feel a little bit of discomfort already coating her skin. They were going to be sharing a bedroom for the next several months, and they’d said very, very few words to one another. So, Jackie figured she’d take one for the team and be the one to stick her neck out first — if all else failed, she could at least walk away saying she’d tried.

“Your mom seems pretty cool,” she mentioned, instantly kicking herself after the words rolled off her tongue and were left to hang in the air between them. _Really, Jackie? You can chat up a Congressman for hours discussing the political climate but you can’t strike up a simple conversation with your roommate?_

Isabelle scoffed, rolling her eyes good-naturedly. “She’s something, alright. Not being back in the South where everyone says ‘excuse me’ as they cram into really small spaces is starting to get under her skin.” Jackie cracked a smile at that, and caught Isabelle’s eyes. Isabelle instantly straightened up from where she was pushing the cart, her hands still glued tight to the edges like her mother had advised. “I’m serious. She almost clocked some woman with her purse at check-in.”

“Your mom’s purse is the size of one of the bags I packed my shoes into,” Jackie dryly informed her.

Isabelle simply nodded. “And now you know why I have to keep her on a tight leash.”

They reached the elevator, Jackie leaning over to press the ‘down’ button. “What’s the deal with your foot and not putting weight on it?”

“Oh, that,” Isabelle mused as she glanced down at the limb in question. “Yeah, I had surgery a few months ago and I just got out of the woods with recovery. My mom seems to think if I stand for too long, I’ll shatter the screws or something.”

“Screws aren’t made of glass,” Jackie noted.

Isabelle snorted. “Try telling her that.”

“Well, I guess if all else fails, we could just push you around in this cart all day.”

Both of Isabelle’s eyebrows furrowed together, the smile still lingering on her face. “I don’t think that’s what they’re purposed for.”

“Hey, you just rented it out – you never signed anything saying you’d only use it to haul furniture.”

Jackie could see the fluorescents reflecting in Isabelle’s eyes, but the mischief seemed to glint even brighter there in her green irises.  It was in that split-second moment that Jackie nailed down her first impression of this girl: she liked her.

They made it outside, Jackie stunned at the amount of people that were now swarming around outside. She felt vaguely like an ant, the entire colony surrounding her on all four sides as they rushed to and from their Point As and Point Bs. There had been a lot of people when she and her mom had brought in the last load of things from the car, but it was nothing compared to this.

“Yeah, I know,” Isabelle commented, the look on Jackie’s face telltale. “We’re not really good about beating the crowd.” She then nudged Jackie’s shoulder with her elbow, starting to push the cart down the sidewalk. “C’mon, let’s go see if we can find the car.”

True to what Isabelle had promised her mother, they had to play Marco Polo in a sea of cars to find the one that belonged to them. It was easy to see the dichotomy between Isabelle and her mother’s relationship and the one Jackie had with her own mother. Isabelle and Elina talked like friends, their conversations laidback and joking, something that Jackie was a stranger to when it came to her mother. Sure, she considered her mom something like her best friend, but hell would have to open up an ice rink on the day that Jackie tried to throw her phone at her mom in attempt to get her attention the way that Isabelle did, _and_ get the same reaction from her mom that Elina had (which was a hell of a lot less than what she was anticipating). Jackie liked being around them, though. They were fun, a lot less rigid than the family she came from. They were casual and vibrant, and Jackie couldn’t help but to want to be a part of it.

She helped Isabelle and Elina unpack the entire car, mostly out of the desire to get to know them beyond their initial introductions. Elina was a retired journalist and news correspondent, a societal rank that would have pushed her closer to the likes of Jackie’s family; she now spent her time running something that sounded a whole lot like a lifestyle blog. Jackie could tell that it was a lot less stressful of a life, judging by the lively personality that kept her daughter on her toes and the encompassing warmth she’d embraced Jackie with. Next to her, Jackie’s people weren’t nearly as warm – they were smiley by manufacture and strategically placed in warm rooms. There was an ingenuity and relaxation about the way Elina carried herself, and it gave Jackie a sliver of hope that it was possible to escape a life of stress wrinkles and adopt one that was more smile lines.

Isabelle, on the other hand, was what Jackie would have pegged as a jock. A quick peek at some of the picture frames that Isabelle had handed off for her to load into the cart told as much, with the medals around her neck and the sweat glistening off of her body. It explained why Isabelle had a figure that was to die for, and enough strength to move one of the dorm-issue desks on her own. She had a subtlety about her that she didn’t get from her mother by any means, her enthusiasm watered down into expressions and slight actions that would have gone unnoticed to the naked eye (Jackie, however, was ever the observer and had fine-tuned her gaze). Isabelle also had a fantastic taste in music, the discovery coming about when she suggested hooking her Spotify up to the speaker she’d packed while the two of them rearranged their furniture.  

Truthfully, Jackie was pleasantly surprised over how quickly she had warmed up to Isabelle in general. The awkwardness and discomfort seemed to have melted away with all of the heat that had entered the room the more physical their labor became in forcing the beds up against the same wall and sliding desks around to the foot of the bed in an intricate, life-sized puzzle. She was comfortable around Isabelle, already cracking laughs as Isabelle parkour-jumped over one of the desks in the way to get to her suitcase and rolling her eyes at an out-of-view Elina that was snapping at her to be careful with her ankle. It was a relief for Jackie; she’d needed this situation to work out. Misery loved company, and Jackie was not interested in keeping it. Not on this blank slate.

Somewhere after one, Isabelle and Elina were waving their white flags and retired for a lunch break. Isabelle was in the same predicament Jackie had been in – flying across the country meant she’d only been able to bring the absolute essentials and a lot of things were waiting for her to pick up or needed to be purchased. They’d extended the invitation to go for lunch to Jackie and Kimberly, Kimberly accepting the minute she saw her daughter turn to look at her with hopeful, pleading eyes.

Elina was a full-fledged vegan, a characteristic Jackie hadn’t been anticipating from a woman that came from the deep South, so they’d picked a restaurant within walking distance of campus (neither Kimberly or Elina were willing to sacrifice their parking spots) that was vegan friendly. The four of them had sat outside under an air-conditioned awning, crowded around a tiny circle table as Kimberly and Elina discussed something that Jackie could have sworn sounded awfully political, Isabelle looking on at all of Jackie’s Europe pictures with little hearts in her eyes.

Jackie and Kimberly stayed behind once they’d finished, Isabelle and Elina departing to go run a few errands. They were waiting on their check to arrive, Jackie chasing the almost-melted ice in her water around with her straw and Kimberly picking at the last few bites of her salad. “Well,” Kimberly finally asked. “What do you think?”

Both of Jackie’s eyebrows lifted, her line of sight still following the ice cubes in her drink. “Think about?” she prompted.

“All of it,” Kimberly replied, meek shrug following. “The apartment, Isabelle, what you’ve seen of campus…”

“I like it,” Jackie said. “I like it all a lot.”

Kimberly nodded, hand jutting out to take the check from the waiter. She tucked her card into the check holder and handed it back off to him in the same fluid motion, her attention settling back onto her daughter. “I really like Isabelle,” she tossed out. “She and her mother are both lovely.”

“Yep,” Jackie hummed.

From the corners of her peripheral vision, Jackie could see her mom lean forward and rest both of her folded hands on the table top. “Jac,” she said, her voice shifting into a very urgent, very motherly tone that had enough power to tear Jackie’s eyes off of her glass and meet hers. “If you aren’t happy about something, you need to speak up now while you’ve still got the chance.”

Jackie had to physically resist the urge to roll her eyes. Of _course_ her mother would translate a lack of exuberant enthusiasm that bursted out of her skin like fireworks as overall disdain and a desire to call off every shot that had been made thus far. Jackie knew what place that thought derived from, and it was a place she was tired of visiting. “Mother,” she stated levelly, reaching out and resting a hand on top of her mother’s. “I promise you, I don’t want to be anywhere else but here. This is what I want. It’s like you say: everything has a beginning, middle, and an end. This is a beginning. I’m just not used to those.”

She watched as her mother folded, a smile of complacency still riddled in anxiety and uncertainty curving across her mouth. Throwing her mother’s words back at her probably wasn’t the wisest move, but if there was anyone her mother was bound to listen to, it was herself. “As long as you’re happy, sweetheart.”

Jackie gave a firm nod. “I am.” And she meant it wholeheartedly. There was only arrival here, there was no such thing as retreat. She didn’t want to look back even for a second. She was here, _finally_ here, and there was nothing and nowhere else on her radar. Not when she’d finally made it to the place she’d clung tight to for four long years. 

Step three of actually getting herself to the moment when the future full of bright and shiny promises of novelty became her present?

Check.

* * *

The best way to wrap up any long day of physical labor, endless unpacking and organization, and an emotional farewell with her mother that took all of Isabelle’s willpower not to cry through was ice cream.

The bedroom didn’t feel like home just yet, but Isabelle figured it wouldn’t take too long to grow on her. It was cozy, after all of the grueling work that she was sure, in some places, would have qualified both her and Jackie as interior designers.  They’d strung Christmas lights from pillar to post to eradicate a need for the otherwise harsh overhead lights, pictures covered the walls, and Jackie’s plug-in air freshener was already beginning to cover up the stale air with the scent of lavender and chamomile.

Isabelle liked Jackie, too. They hadn’t talked much before moving in, but it didn’t take long to feel at ease around her. Jackie, from what Isabelle had been able to gather on only a few hours of knowing her, was a good balance for her. Jackie seemed to like discipline with the way she clung to a sense of order and structure, much more than Isabelle did, but there was a childlike essence about her that Isabelle had personally lost touch with years ago. She hoped that the inclination she had would turn out to be true: Jackie was going to be good for her.

It was Jackie who suggested they go to the first night carnival that the school was hosting out on the Great Lawn after they’d finished an in-room dinner and a Harry Potter movie (Jackie’s suggestion – apparently, she was a big book nerd, and Isabelle believed it if the number of books crammed onto Jackie’s shelves in their sitting area were any indication).

“Carnival?” Isabelle echoed, watching as Jackie hopped off her bed.

“Yeah,” Jackie responded. “Or, I mean, there’s a casino night thing going on down at Parkside, but I’m not much of a gambler. Apparently, my poker face is rubbish.” She stopped in her tracks, eyes enlarged as she looked at Isabelle. “Unless you don’t wanna go? I just figured it’d be nice to get out of the room since we’ve been in here all day – we can watch another Potter if you’d rather stay in.”

“No!” Isabelle was quick to exclaim, shaking her head. “I mean, not that I don’t like a Harry marathon, but yes. Let’s get out of the room.” She was tripping over her words, unsure of how to make her answers direct and without any sort of accidental double entendre. “Carnival it is,” she finally said definitively, scooting off of her bed to find her shoes.

She’d changed out of the sweaty clothes she’d worn all day during moving, opting for a tank-top she was almost positive she’d stolen from Kalia a few years ago and a pair of denim shorts with a flannel tied around her waist. Her hair had been taken out of the braids from earlier, now falling around her face in loose waves. She looked a little less like the version of herself she was so accustomed to – her normal was what she’d showed up to campus in that morning – but this was an opportunity to try on a different skin, see if she could make it stick. Why else did people move all the way across the country to get an education they could very easily get twenty miles away from their house? It surely wasn’t because a change of scenery sounded nice.  

A nice day had transitioned neatly into a nice night, the air warm with the occasional movement of a breeze pushing Isabelle’s hair back behind her shoulders and across her face. The Great Lawn was lit up, the sounds of music guiding their way towards the thick of it. There were carnival games and booths littered across the lawn, food vendors and what looked like inflatables with long lines of avidly chattering people wrapped around them. If Kalia had reminded Isabelle once, she’d reminded her a dozen times that she was going to one of the most notorious party schools in the country.   

While she knew this wasn’t necessarily what Kalia had had in mind, to Isabelle, a party was a party. This one just happened to be more her speed.

She stuck close to Jackie as they wandered around, trying their hand at a few of the games. Things like this were designed to be opportunities to get to know other people, but it was very obvious that they were in the minority: most of the students living at the Village were upperclassmen. Freshmen landing spots in any of the Village residential colleges was a rarity, and Isabelle knew it had been a crazy stroke of luck. Most of the people around them were there with their already well-established friend groups, not looking to exchange much more than a few formalities with the people around them in line. It made having Jackie nice. They were both in the same boat and therefore less alone than they would have been otherwise.

There was only so much around that they could do without waiting in lines that seemed to stretch on further and further the later into the night they got. Even though she was technically in the all-clear when it came to her recovery, jumping headfirst into an inflatable obstacle course didn’t seem like the wisest of ideas. Jackie wasn’t clamoring to get into a bouncy castle, either. Most of their energy was spent after the day of moving they’d had.

Instead they walked around, mostly talking to one another and stopping every so often that they saw a game that didn’t have too incredibly long of a line. Isabelle had figured out very quickly that talking to Jackie was like taking a journey somewhere else. All of the traveling Jackie had done made it seem like Isabelle had been trapped in Alpharetta her whole life like she was Rapunzel. The way she talked so animatedly and the stories she had in her repertoire kept the conversations rolling without their foreseeable end anywhere in sight. She definitely liked Jackie, and was grateful that her streak of housing luck hadn’t begun and ended at getting in a nice building.

Giving off a false impression that there was a line for the ring toss was an ice cream vendor, and it was an instantaneous, mutual decision that they’d wait however long they had to for free ice cream. “Can you tell what flavors they’re handing out?” Jackie asked Isabelle once they were close to the halfway point, propped up on her tiptoes as she tried to get a look at the sign.

“Not really,” Isabelle replied. “I’m only taller than you by an inch, and that’s only because of my shoes.”

“Yeah, and this guy is like a skyscraper,” Jackie grumbled as quietly as she could without being overheard by the person in question. The person in front of them couldn’t have been any shorter than six feet even.

Jackie hadn’t been quiet enough, apparently, because the guy turned around a few seconds later with an enlightened smirk riddled over his features. “It’s just the basics. Vanilla, chocolate and strawberry,” he answered.

Jackie looked very similarly to how Isabelle felt in that moment – like a deer in headlights. Jackie gave a stiff nod, doing her best to rein all of her composure back in. “Uh, thanks,” she said, her delivery shaky from pulling the words out of thin air after her brain had been wiped blank.

The guy’s smirk only grew at the sight of how flustered Jackie had gotten, starting to turn back around. “No problem, shortcake.”

When he had his back to them again, Jackie leaned in close to Isabelle to prevent from making her previous mistake. “I’m five-four,” she muttered matter-of-factly.

Eventually they made it to the front of the line, Isabelle asking for a chocolate cone and Jackie opting for strawberry. As they approached the toppings table that had been set off to the side, it came as no surprise that the same guy that had been in front of them was still lingering there, dousing his vanilla ice cream in chocolate syrup. Fate, after all, craved some sort of entertainment that tasted of irony.

“I don’t see why you wouldn’t just ask for chocolate if that’s all you’re gonna do,” Jackie mused as she stopped next to him, waiting patiently for him to pass the bottle off.

He seemed amused to see Jackie yet again, turning so his entire body was facing her. “Because what’s the fun in that, shortcake?”

“It’s not fun, it’s smart.”

He handed her the bottle, hesitating for a split second before he released his grip. “Well, classes haven’t started yet, so I’m acting on all of the dumb decisions I can possibly make in the hopes that they’ll be out of my system by that point.”

“Sounds like a good enough motto,” Isabelle offered, determined to jump in the conversation before she got left behind or Jackie found enough reason to get genuinely ticked off with this guy and act on it. “How’s that working out for you so far?”

“Not very well,” another voice answered for him. It was then that Isabelle noticed a shorter brunet leaning past his friend to make his presence known, his face drawn up in a scowl. “He almost knocked a hole in the wall earlier trying to get a Command strip to stick.”

“Hey, in my defense, those things sometimes need a little extra nudge to start doing their job,” the first guy protested. Picking up the sprinkle shaker, he tilted it towards Isabelle in acknowledgement of her statement before shaking it over his own cup of ice cream. “Anyways, I like how your friend thinks, shortcake.”

“And I like how your friend thinks much better than I do you. _And_ it’s Jackie.”

The guy seemed all too amused by this, a slight chuckle escaping his throat. “Nice to meet ‘ya, Jackie, I’m Jack.”

Jackie stopped her methodical zig-zag of chocolate syrup to glance up at him in horror. “You’re kidding,” she deadpanned.

“’Fraid not.” Jack’s thumb tipped in the direction of his friend. “This is my roommate, Josh.” Josh lifted the free hand that wasn’t clutching his ice cream cone and gave a small wave to the girls. Jack then nodded in Isabelle’s direction. “Do you have a J name too? ‘Cause we could definitely have something working for us if you do.”

“Nope,” Isabelle shot down, letting a few Oreo crumbles fall from her hand and on top of her ice cream cone. “Unfortunately, it’s Isabelle. Blame my mother.”

“Damn,” he muttered. “So much for J to the fourth.”

“Are you guys living in the Village this year?” Josh asked, taking a step back from the table to make room for the steady trickle of people that continued approaching the table.

“Yeah,” Isabelle answered.

“Although I don’t know if we ought to tell you where we live,” Jackie added, her comment mostly directed at Jack. “Especially if you’re the serial killer type.”

“Shortcake, look at this face. You think I’m capable of murder?”

“Appearances are deceiving.”

Isabelle wasn’t sure where this feistiness had been hiding in Jackie, and she was even more unsure if she ought to be openly enjoying it as much as she was. Watching Jackie’s personality unravel seemed to be the equivalent of cracking the lid on Pandora’s box – it was one thing after another with her. “We’re in Irani,” she told Josh, disregarding the sidebar conversation the other two were entangled in.

His eyes widened slightly in surprise. “Really? So are we, third floor.”

“So are we,” Isabelle replied.

That revelation plugged Jack right in, his face lighting up. “You hear that, Jackie? We’re gonna be hall buddies.”

“Delightful,” Jackie drawled.

“Are you guys sophomores too?” Jack asked, leading the girls and Jack away from a high-traffic area and towards a patch of space where people were spread out, sitting on the grass as they ate their ice cream and caught up with their friends.

“Nope,” Jackie answered, folding her legs and plopping down on the ground. “We’re freshman.”

“You guys got into Irani as freshman?” Josh repeated incredulously. “Damn, you two lucked out.”

“Yeah, we were stuck in Trojan Hall last year,” Jack said, shuddering at the memory of their former residence. “You know why they call it Trojan Hall?”

“Because we’re the USC Trojans and creativity is a dead language?” Jackie retorted before spooning a bit of her ice cream into her mouth.

“No, because if you live there, you’re fucked.”

Isabelle snorted, covering her mouth to keep from spitting chocolate ice cream everywhere. “You think it’s funny,” Jack continued, his face solemn. “But you aren’t going to spend over half of your freshman year contemplating if you’d have more room living in a cardboard box on McCarthy Quad or praying for a vacancy in Greek Hell down at New/North.”

“And you’ll have clean floors,” Josh added. “We had to wear two pairs of socks if we dared to walk around without shoes on.”

Jackie’s eyebrows raised up into her hairline. “Two pairs of socks?”

“Yeah, one to keep your feet clean and one to keep your socks white.”

“Sounds charming,” Jackie commented.

“It’s a humbling experience, the freshmen dorms,” Jack said. He nudged Jackie’s kneecap with the edge of his foot. “Be grateful you won’t have to see how the other half lives.” 

“Do you guys have majors yet?” Josh inquired, steamrolling ahead with his game of twenty questions.

Jackie and Isabelle both looked at one another quizzically; they didn’t even know that about the other yet. Isabelle was first to break eye contact, glancing back over in the boys’ direction. “Right now, it’s psychology,” she replied, thinking back to what she’d written down on the paper back at her orientation session in June. “Subject to change, of course, if I wind up hating it.”

“Totally get that,” Josh said. “Jack changed his major four times last year, to the point where his advisor finally told him it was going to start charging his student account since she was having to print so many copies of the change request paperwork.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Dude.”

“What? It’s not wrong. They thought you’d set a campus record.”

Josh’s statement, despite eliciting a small laugh out of Isabelle, went disregarded by Jack. “What about you, shortcake?”

“Philosophy, politics, and law,” Jackie answered, Jack’s eyes bugging out of his head at the response.

“Jesus, you’re triple majoring?!”

Jackie rolled her eyes. “There’s no such thing as a triple major; USC has a concentration where you get to dabble, and since I don’t know which one out of the three I’m more interested in, I’m dabbling.”

“Well, if you’re looking to dabble to your heart’s content, this is the place to do it.” Both of Jack’s arms stretched out, the smile curling on his lips. “No better place to be than USC.”

Isabelle took another lick of her ice cream cone, soaking in her surroundings for a brief moment. The music carried by the gentle breeze over the sounds of late-night traffic, all of the Los Angeles city lights sparking up the dark of night, being with what she could maybe start to consider friends (or at least decent company until she was able to make friends of her own), free ice cream and a new start? _No better place to be than USC_ , her brain echoed.

She could buy into that.


	2. burn your biographies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is nearly 10k. i'm very sorry - y'all know i don't understand brevity!!! she don't exist in my brain!! nanowrimo is going somewhat okay, we're officially over the halfway point and after a devastating loss of my outlines on day 15 (never trust a hoe called notepad) and the mountain of homework that won't complete itself, i have been on the struggle bus. but we're going somewhere. i'm almost finished with chapter five (32k and i'm only on chapter five, that should give you an idea of where this fic is going lmao) and i have so, so much planned for this fic, so i'm really happy to hear that you guys are enjoying it! it means a lot knowing you've taken time out of your day to click on this and give it a shot. don't forget to leave a comment once you (finally) make it to the end of the chapter - feedback makes my world turn! also please remember that i do NOT go to usc, although i'm sure their servers think i'm interested in the school seeing as how i stay on their websites for #research purposes. i can't wait for december third to be here so i can focus on what's truly important in my life. aka, not school. 
> 
> chapter title is from panic! at the disco's 'high hopes.' come hang out with me on instagram @tributediaries if you wanna jump back in time to 2012 when times were simpler and the only true stress we had was defending clato to that same one glato anon who would never give it a rest. happy reading. xx

From all the extensive combing of blog articles and college-themed literature she’d consumed before coming out to California, Isabelle had discovered there was such a thing as a first week friend. The term was pretty explicit and left little room for interpretation: first week friends were friends that you made your first week of college that would fade into oblivion after some time passed and you had the opportunity to branch out and find people with similar schedules, similar interests, and weren’t just in the need of first-come-first-serve company.

First-week friends were uncharted territory for Isabelle. Making friends had never been a complicated task, but she was very much out of the practice. She’d had all the friends she’d ever needed in Kalia and JP, and if they weren’t present (which was a rarity) then there was always someone within fingertip length to reach out to – someone on her team, the person who sat next to her in math, the stragglers that sat on the fringes of their lunch table that Isabelle always tried to offer a smile. Friends and the company of strangers had been a necessity to Kalia, not Isabelle. But somewhere along the way, they’d become two halves of a whole and now that she was away from Kalia, Isabelle could feel a gaping hole where all of that sociability had been ripped away. She wasn’t complaining any about having stuffed that hole with something until she could learn to refamiliarize herself with being on her own or found other friends. It felt nice having people, even if their presence had an expiration date.

Isabelle wasn’t sure what brought about the demise of a first week friend and created the chasm of distance, but she _was_ sure that her first week friends had started planting roots instead of catching the wind.

Exhibits A and B: Jack and Josh. Isabelle wouldn’t have been too shocked if Jackie had been crossing her fingers for no more bump-ins with Jack after that first night on the lawn, but sitting on the grass until nearly one in the morning talking about everything under the sun didn’t exactly scream, _‘we’re planning to get rid of you the first chance we get!’_ In fact, it just opened the door for what Isabelle assumed was real, genuine friendship.

It also opened a literal door – Jackie and Isabelle had already gotten into the terrible habit of not locking theirs. It did save time, though, seeing as how Jack’s tendency for knocking loudly was a surefire way to garner a noise complaint. If they didn’t know any better, they would have assumed his goal was to put a hole in the wood.

The boys might have been on the opposite end of the hall, but it didn’t stop them from taking detours and stopping by. Isabelle wasn’t complaining much; it was nice linking up with people who were familiar with the campus and had lived through their first year already. They’d accompanied the girls to dinner a couple of times, giving them the lay of the land and passing along tips and pointers that would potentially come in handy. Jack and Josh had even invited them to tag along with them to the Welcome Back Concert. Isabelle was appreciative of their presence. She was fairly confident that Jackie was, too, even if she didn’t care to admit that Jack had been helpful. 

On the night before classes were set to start, Jackie and Isabelle were sitting in their living room finishing up from dinner and mapping out their strategic maneuvers of how to get to each class when Jack came barging in without any sort of preamble.

It startled Jackie, her notebook clattering to the ground at the sound of the door opening. “Jesus Christ,” she hissed, hand clutching at her chest.

“I prefer Jack, but if you insist.” Jackie rolled her eyes, bending down to pick up her notebook. Isabelle glanced around the arm of the couch, smiling when she saw Jack. “What are you two up to?” he asked, both of his hands coming to settle on his hips.

“Figuring out the game plan for tomorrow,” Isabelle replied, holding up the campus map that they’d gotten from the RA manning the desk down front and waving it around.

“Good, so nothing important,” he concluded, reaching out to grab hold of Jackie’s wrist as she came sauntering by him on her way to the kitchen. “C’mon, ladies. We’re having a crisis in 312.”

Jackie stared up at him, bewildered. “Yeah, and we’re having a crisis here in 328 – it’s called we don’t know the first thing about where we’re going tomorrow and we aren’t relying on the Northern Star to do the trick.” If there was anything that they’d all figured out about Jackie over the last few days, it was that she spoke sarcasm much more fluently than any other language she’d picked up in all of her time traveling abroad.

“We can split an Uber tomorrow, I’ll show you guys where to go. There, _crisis solved_ , now come on, shortcake,” he concluded, tugging her along out the door. “Iz, you too.”

Isabelle gave him a mock salute before rolling off of the couch and following suit, double-checking that she still had her key tucked in the pocket of her sweatpants.

The boys were also in a single-bedroom unit, which explained why they had all wound up on the same hall. The similarities began and ended there. If Isabelle and Jackie’s apartment was day, then by default, the boys’ apartment was night. Isabelle had only seen in the living room when they’d breezed through on their way out, but there was much more chaos than cohesion in their setup. Boxes and storage containers from moving day were still out in the middle of the floor, groceries sat unpacked on the kitchen counter in their bags, and then there was the current predicament of Josh, who was standing in front of their TV surrounded by papers and cables on the verge of a breakdown.

“Okay, you guys are definitely having more of a crisis than we are,” Jackie whistled, surveying the scene from inside the doorway.

At the sound of her voice, Josh turned around. His shoulders dropped, head tilting back as he sighed. “Thank _god_. I need other intelligent minds in on this.”

 “Which would be?” Isabelle prompted as she slid past Jackie and underneath Jack’s arm, stepping foot into the madness.

“We’re trying to set up this stupid Roku TV but apparently, they don’t believe in providing instructions for the technologically challenged,” Josh explained, handing off the remote to Isabelle once she was within reach. He took a few steps back, harrumphing as he flopped down onto the couch in resignation. “Everything is supposed to be idiot-proof these days.”

Isabelle’s line of sight shifted upwards after a moment of studying the remote, turning to look at Jackie. She was staring up at Jack, hands rooted on her hips and housing an overall expression of displeasure. “Tech support?” she finally questioned. He didn’t get the chance to respond before she hit him in the arm with her notebook, shoving past to assist Isabelle.

“Why didn’t you guys have your parents set this thing up when you first moved in?” Isabelle asked, still fiddling with the remote as Jackie bent down to look for the instructional manual.

Jack’s reply was matter-of-fact, steamrolling right over the logical explanation Josh was attempting to provide. “Because, Iz, we have reputations to uphold. Can't have our parents doing all the heavy lifting.”

“Jack Quaid,” Jackie profiled as she straightened back up. “Can somehow score high enough on the SATs to get accepted into USC, cannot read and comprehend instruction manual that is written in diagram form.”

“Why did we call them again?” Jack muttered as he sat down next to Josh.

“Because they’re the smarter species and we both know it.”

“Damn straight we are,” Isabelle chimed in, not even needing to look in Jackie’s direction to know that she would meet her raised hand in a high-five.

It very quickly evolved into a trade of tasks after about ten minutes of the boys feeling like they needed to redeem themselves by being useful in some way. Isabelle and Jackie troubleshooted through all of the already inflicted damage to the Roku set-up while the boys sat down at their kitchen table and went through the maps of campus, marking all of the places that the girls had classes in the morning and the fastest routes to take. Josh let the girls dip into his family sized bag of Sun Chips while they worked, and Jack made sure that he stuck to Jackie’s already existing color-codes that were printed neatly in the inside cover of her notebook as he labeled all of her classes on the map.

For all Isabelle knew, Jack and Josh (and maybe even Jackie) would never go past the point of being first week friends. But there was no denying that they all meshed well with one another, that they worked well and they seemed to _work_ well too, and that had to count for something in the favor of friendship.

* * *

 **IMESSAGE**  
K. Prescott 🌙  
Monday

 

 _ **1:30AM**_  
Happy FDOC, baby bells! Have a  
good day, knock ‘em dead, and  
if your Uber driver looks sketch,  
go for the emergency brake

 ** _6:54AM_**  
Subtlety still isn’t ur thing, huh??

Thank you though, mama 💋  
Hope Germany is treating you good

 ** _7:02AM_** **  
** Never has been, never will be

Love you long time 💞

* * *

The first week of classes had been a whirlwind, and it was only Wednesday.

Jackie didn’t know what emotion she felt more of: exhaustion, excitement, anxiety, or restlessness, so she went with the safe bet of overwhelmed. It was a good sort of overwhelmed, though, the sort of overwhelmed that she’d dreamed of being whenever she sat in the library on her lunch break senior year doing virtual campus tours. Coming in with a handful of her gen-ed requirements already under the belt meant that she was jumping headfirst into classes that aligned with her major. Off to the races it was, and she had hit the ground running.

Even in the classes that counted as general credits, she wasn’t with Isabelle or Josh (or even Jack, even if he was somewhat of a thorn in her side) which automatically meant she was usually on her own throughout the day. Jackie wasn’t bothered by it, already accustomed to operating as a lone wolf. Independence was not a stranger in her world; when your parents were very much involved in a field of work that demanded undivided attention and the commitment of borderline nomadic lifestyles, Jackie was well-versed in how to be her own best friend. She didn’t really need friends to survive.

Her days so far had been filled with a lot of time withdrawn into her own thoughts. Most of her anxiety dreams as of late had involved being late to all of her classes, so to alleviate those lingering worries, Jackie showed up to all of her classes an hour early at the very least. She’d also kept to herself during her classes thus far, not experiencing the burning need to branch out and strike up a conversation with her neighbor as the professor read over the syllabus and took questions that typically had their answers printed in black and white on page five already. She sat in her seat – all of which were strategically selected in relation to the professor’s proximity – took her notes, highlighted things, and wrote down dates in advance.

So far, it had been just a lot of Jackie talking to herself throughout the day, with the occasional interpersonal interaction in the form of a text message from Isabelle asking how her day was going.

It was how she found herself sitting at a table outside of where her statistics class met nearly an hour and a half before statistics was even scheduled to start. She was getting a head start on the week’s homework in all of her other classes, earbuds in and the classical study playlist curated by her sisters on shuffle.

Just because she wasn’t spending her time in class mingling in the hopes of finding a best friend or husband didn’t mean that she was completely engrossed in things solely occurring on Planet Jackie. She was observant, and had already gotten a scope of the people in her statistics class. Some of them would take a couple of class sessions before they stuck in her memory, but there were others that only needed a single impression. The girl who sat three seats down from her fell into the latter category.

Not only was she the unforgettable type, but she was standing in front of Jackie with her bag slung over her shoulder, pale green eyes locked dead on Jackie and waiting patiently for her to look up from her work.

It took Jackie a second to realize someone was standing in front of her – not just anyone, either, but the leggy blonde who sat three seats down that looked as though someone had peeled her right from the pages of Vogue. People like her were incredibly hard to miss, and typically observant Jackie had noticed her right away when she’d walked in on the first day. She didn’t know how she’d missed her approach. Apparently, her mind, self, and consciousness class was more riveting than anticipated.

Jackie took an unsuspecting glance up and was surprised to see the girl standing in front of her. She raced to hit pause on her playlist, ripping out her earbuds hastily. The girl smiled apologetically, hand resting on the shoulder strap of her bag. “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything,” she prefaced, Jackie shaking her head profusely.

“No, that’s – you didn’t interrupt anything,” Jackie rushed to get out.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” the girl asked, gesturing towards the empty chair beside Jackie.

Jackie’s lips pressed into a thin smile. “Go for it.”

“Thanks.” She slid into the chair, hooking her bag onto the back of the seat. Already distracted, Jackie watched from the corner of her eye as the girl spun around, digging for something in the depths of her bag as she balanced a pen between two rows of perfect white teeth.

She shouldn’t have had any issue ignoring the blonde next to her as she went about reading the articles her professor had assigned, but that was the thing about people like this girl. They didn’t just command attention, they demanded it, even if it wasn’t directly so. Every couple of minutes, Jackie found her torn attention span diverting back to her seatmate and what she was doing – sketching something in the thick black sketchbook she had produced from her bag.

“I’m a design major,” the girl finally spoke up after nearly twenty minutes of Jackie’s back-and-forth gaze, startling Jackie with her sudden dialogue. She lifted the book slightly off of the table, tilting it upwards in Jackie’s direction for emphasis.

“That’s…uh, that’s really good.” Her compliment came off as very passive and half-hearted, but Jackie hadn’t lied; she’d never been friends with someone who knew how to draw even remotely as good as this girl. She was clearly in the middle of a drawing, what appeared to be a model in an unfinished dress.

“You think?”

Jackie nodded. “Yeah; is that for a class or something?”

Blonde curls spilled down over the back of the chair as the girl shook her head. “Nah, it’s just a little doodle I’ve been working on for the last week or so in my spare time,” she admitted. Doodles in Jackie’s world were haphazard flowers and patterns of lines. What this girl was working on was a fucking art project.

“I’m Leven, by the way,” the girl said.

“Jackie.”

“Let me guess, you’re a freshman?”

Jackie smiled sheepishly, feeling some of the heat rise to her cheeks. “That obvious?”

“No one else shows up an hour and a half early to class.” Leven – of _course_ her name was Leven – shot her a wink as she sat her sketchbook flat on the table once more. “Don’t worry, I was the same way. Once you get a feel for the traffic, it’s a lot easier to gauge how much time it takes.”

“I’m from DC,” Jackie informed her. “All we know is bumper-to-bumper.”

“Then you should be right at home here,” Leven replied, giving Jackie a dazzling smile before turning back to her sketches.

Leven and Jackie were the first two into the classroom after the last few stragglers of the previous class had exited, a funny sort of expression twisting across Leven’s face as the two of them headed up towards the same row. “What’s your major?” Leven’s voice seemed to echo in the quiet of the auditorium, carrying as best it could to fill the space around them.

“Philosophy, politics and law,” Jackie rattled off. Leven gave a resounding nod as she sat down in her seat. “Why do you have to take stats as a design major?”

“It’s required for my minor.” Jackie realized she must have been shooting her a puzzled look, because Leven’s head tilted to the side as she responded, “Business.”

“Two totally different worlds then,” she commented, placing her bookbag in the floor beside her seat.

“It all ties together eventually,” Leven said with a shrug. “What about you? Thought about a minor?”

“Maybe. Just depends on if I’ve got any time left over.” That was somewhat of a lie; Jackie had scoured the minor catalogues high and low even before she’d settled on a major. Picking what her parents would have deemed a practical field for her major meant she’d stared at the fine arts minors longingly. She always wanted to do it all and not sacrifice one for the other, despite her parents’ warning to just choose one. Being a jack of one trade alone wasn’t a challenge, and Jackie liked challenges.

People that Jackie recognized as fellow statistics classmates slowly started to trickle in as they got closer to the time class was slated to start, the conversation with Leven being put on pause just like her sketching had been ever since they’d stepped foot in the room. Jackie burrowed back into her assignment, working without the aide of her classical music while waiting for class to start.

Statistics was boring but required. Jackie figured she could suffer through just about anything after surviving an entire mind-numbing year of AP Econ. Dr. Mahoney was not helping his case any by announcing at the start of class that they were basically steering the Titanic straight through the iceberg – or, as he actually referred to it, doing an icebreaker. 

They were the bane of Jackie’s existence already, and it was only Wednesday. She understood the purpose behind icebreakers, but at the same time, she didn’t. She was there to learn. Learning everyone’s names and favorite colors did not count.

Her opinion on the matter unfortunately didn’t hold any sort of value, because Dr. Mahoney still asked them all to take out a piece of notebook paper, draw a line down the middle to make two columns: one labeled as strengths, one as weaknesses. Everyone was to fill in a few of their own strengths and weaknesses before they got out of their seats to circulate around the room and find a match. It wasn’t the most demanding icebreaker she’d been roped into all week, but she still disapproved on the whole. Sharing weaknesses with strangers? Big no-no.

 _We’re trying to start anew here, Jackie_ , her inner voice chided. _And New Jackie doesn’t need to be guarded up like Alcatraz, playing only to win and forbidden from showing a soft underbelly of any kind._

 _Yeah, well_ , she wanted to argue, _old habits always die hard._

Jackie wasn’t afraid to admit that she was calculated, especially when it came to working smarter and not harder. Dr. Mahoney waved his hands around like he was conducting an orchestra as he sent them on their way to find matches, signaling Jackie to hit play on her game plan – keep it local, branch out only if absolutely necessary.

She didn’t seem to be the only one with that thought, because as she looked down the row, her eyes ran right into Leven’s expecting gaze. Leven’s lips curled into a closed-mouth smile, grabbing ahold of her paper as she got up from her seat. Jackie returned the expression, grateful that she wasn’t an original for once.

Leven closed the gap of empty chairs between them (apparently, sitting near the front and center was not a popular choice among college students) and slipped into the seat beside Jackie, holding out her notebook paper. “Anything in common?” she asked, leaning over the arm rest to get a glimpse at Jackie’s responses.

“Well, I know for sure that one of your strengths is one of my weaknesses,” Jackie teased as her eyes darted over Leven’s paper. She instantly spotted that they had something in common, but she wasn’t sure if anal-retentiveness was something Leven considered a strength. It came as no surprise that a girl who spent most of her time with a pencil in hand had such neat penmanship; all of her letters wide, loopy, and evenly-spaced.

Her comment went mostly disregarded, Leven already pointing at something that she’d written in the strength column. “We’re both good at organization,” she read off. “And I think we both had something about leadership skills, too.”

“My kind of person, then.”

Leven smiled in response. The rest of the class was moving around and avidly chattering with one another as they looked over the strengths and weaknesses of strangers. Jackie and Leven were content to observe everyone else, sitting still in the midst of it all.

Movement from Leven caught Jackie’s attention, head snapping in her direction to see what she was doing. She was scribbling something on the top of her sheet of notebook paper – Leven was left-handed, and whatever she was writing was blocked by the obstruction of her writing hand. The message must have been short, because a few seconds later her pen was down and Leven was tearing the corner of the paper off.

“Here,” she said as she turned back towards Jackie, extending the torn scrap of paper her way. “We gotta have somebody to keep us sane in this class, why not each other?”

Jackie hesitantly took the paper from Leven, looking down at it once again. “Yeah,” she said after a pause of silence. She perked up a little when the certainty began to flood her system, her shoulders lifting and back straightening as she tucked the paper into the clear slip of her binder. “Yeah, that totally works for me. Thanks.”

“No problem.” 

* * *

Apparently, the welcome week events on campus were a big deal. She hadn’t been keeping count, but Isabelle could have sworn that Jack and Josh had dragged them out to at least one every single night during the first week of classes. One night it had been the open floor party down at McCarthy Quad, and another night they’d gone to an outdoor movie night on the Great Lawn and made the rounds on all of the food trucks. Most of the events were designed to get people out of their comfort zones and throw them into the thick of the USC social scene (as curated by USC staff, anyways – Isabelle would have bet her scholarship money that there were plenty of welcome week events hosted by the students that weren’t open to faculty and staff). There were hundreds of people at each one, meaning that Jackie got her wish of arriving early every time they struck out to an event so they’d be able to find seats together.

It came as a slight surprise when Jackie came in on Friday afternoon after her classes, pitching the idea of going to an event that night. “BuzzFeed’s going to be in the ballroom tonight,” she announced once she was at least two steps inside the room, abandoning all of her things on their tiny kitchen table. Isabelle had been sitting on the couch watching TV after a long morning of homework, taking advantage of her day off to veg out after an exhilarating week.

“For what?” Isabelle asked, turning the volume down on the Grey’s Anatomy marathon that had been on since lunch time.

Jackie stood off to the side of the couch, tugging her red hair up into a sloppy makeshift bun. “They’re hosting some welcome back event, I think? I don’t really know what it’s gonna be, but it’s Buzzfeed, so you know it’s not gonna be boring.”

“The boys are definitely rubbing off on you,” Isabelle observed, to which Jackie made a face at. “How’d you even hear about this one?”

“The girl I sit beside in statistics mentioned it in passing. Her roommate is a communications major, and that’s the department that pulled all the strings in getting them on campus. It’s at like, eight tonight or something. You wanna go?”

“Sure. It’s that or do homework, and I am _really_ tired of doing homework.”

She watched as Jackie’s lips started curling into a playful smile. “It’s week one, Bells. What’d you expect?”

“For my professors to be somewhat gracious and understanding towards the fact that it’s week one.”

Jackie’s laugh floated like a melody throughout the apartment.

That’s how Isabelle found herself, sitting a seat away from Jackie in the ballroom at seven-thirty absentmindedly fiddling with the claim ticket that she’d been given when she’d walked through the doors. Music from someone’s Spotify playlist filled the room as people started to fill in seats around them.

“You see Jack or Josh anywhere?” Jackie asked, swiveled around in her chair as she kept a trained eye on the doors leading into the ballroom, trying to spot the boys’ arrival. They were doing their best to hold two seats for the boys despite all of the dirty looks one of the girls who was working the event continued to hurl their way, strategically placed so there were two empty chairs between them. The event was filling up fast, and Isabelle knew if they weren’t among the next few to walk in, they’d be left to find seats on their own.  

“Josh is easy to miss,” Isabelle reminded her, waking up her phone to see if there were any new texts from either Jack or Josh. “Jack on the other hand is not; we’d know if he was here by now.”

Jackie exhaled shallowly, the burst of air sliding past her teeth. “God, we should have hauled their asses along with us when we left.”

“Should’ve would’ve could’ve,” Isabelle mumbled under her breath to no one in particular.

“Hey everybody!” All attention in the room was rerouted to the front of the ballroom, where a guy who looked to be in his late-twenties wearing a BuzzFeed shirt had taken the stage. The music was turned down slightly, conversations out in the crowd falling into a near-nonexistent hum. “We just wanna thank everybody really quick for coming out – we’re glad you guys are spending Friday night with us and we hope you have fun tonight, but I need to ask a huge favor. We’ve still got a lot of people coming in, so if you’re already seated, we need for you to get up and all meet in the middle here,” he said, gesturing towards the dead center of the room. “Your shoulder neighbor won’t bite you or anything; please don’t skip any seats, we want to leave the end of the rows open so we can fill everybody in. Thanks, guys! See you in a few.”

Jackie and Isabelle exchanged looks as they both stood up to slide towards the middle of their row. “So much for sitting together,” Isabelle said right as someone turned the music back up to its previous volume.

“We tried.”

Isabelle noticed Jack and Josh coming in roughly two minutes before things were set to start, nudging Jackie with her elbow. Jackie spun around in her seat, making eye contact with Jack almost instantly. The expression on his face spelled out _‘what gives’_ , and both of her shoulders lifting in an exaggerated shrug in response.

It wasn’t long after that that the music died out again, and this time, the lights went with it. A few seconds later a light hit the stage, and a handful of people in BuzzFeed shirts emerged from the shadows with smiles on their faces that seemed too big to be genuine. Isabelle’s arms were folded over her chest as they went through each of their introductions. Things like this weren’t really her scene; the only doses of BuzzFeed that she ever took were their videos of people being surprised with puppies.

“Insecurities,” one of the guys on stage said, drawing Isabelle back out from inside her head. “We’ve all got them. Look at the person beside you.” Jackie and Isabelle turned to look at one another as prompted, Jackie’s wiggling eyebrows cracking a grin on Isabelle’s face. “Whether they’re your best friend or a complete stranger, there’s something that they’re insecure about. You might know what it is, but chances are, you don’t.

“So, true BuzzFeed fashion here – but we want to conduct a little experiment first. College might be about the higher education, but really, it’s all about the connections you make while you’re here, right? And USC is great about encouraging you to look at strangers as potential connections; potential friends, potential more-than-friends, the possibilities are endless. So, we want to see if we can encourage connections with people that you’ve never met before, and the first thing we’re gonna do is remind you that nobody in this room is perfect. We’re all human, we all have insecurities, and sometimes sharing that vulnerability means we can connect with people on a deeper level than we could have ever imagined.”

 _No thanks_ , Isabelle thought to herself.

The lights out in the ballroom came up, and Isabelle caught sight of people moving through the aisles with large stacks of something and buckets. The guy on stage continued to talk. “We’re going to pass out paper and pens, and what we want for you guys to do is to write a letter to yourselves. You can be as kind or as not so kind towards yourselves as you want to, but you’re going to get the most out of this if you talk to yourself like you normally do. Everything is going to be entirely anonymous, so open up about whatever you feel like in your letter. Talk about your insecurities. Be honest. We’ll put a timer up here on the screen and give you guys fifteen minutes before we take them up, and after that we’re going to randomly distribute all of the letters back out to you guys. You’ll get a stranger’s letter, and you’ll have the chance to read it and respond to them. Make sure that on the top of your paper, you write down the number on the claim ticket that you got at the door so you’ll be able to pick up your letter and the response somebody wrote to you on your way out after we finish up.”

The buckets and stacks of paper came down through the aisles. Isabelle picked a pen from the bucket and slid a sheet of paper off the top before passing it down to Jackie, glancing down at the now-wrinkled claim ticket. _122897_ , she wrote slowly in the top right-hand corner of her paper.

“Feel free to start once you get your paper!” The guy on stage encouraged. “We’ve got a lot of stuff to do with you guys tonight. This event is all about making connections that have the potential to change your life. I think this little activity might just do that for some of you.”

. . .

_122897_

_Where are we? How did we get here? This was not the course you had planned for your life, this was not the plan, and yet, here you sit, thousands of miles away from home without a single iota of a clue as to what direction you’re walking in. You push too hard, and that is your biggest flaw. You pushed too hard with running and it got you hurt, and that one little thing changed things permanently. Without running, you have no purpose or plan for where you’re going. And that’s exactly where you are. You lost your purpose the minute you sat down in that doctor’s office. You haven’t been anything since then. Except, of course, being second to a sister that will always take first in everything, a sister you have always lived in the shadows of, a sister you try to pretend you don’t even have because you know the truth: she is everything you aren’t and you hate that. She doesn’t have your freckles that you just can’t seem to find beautiful, she doesn’t have your worries, she is nowhere near as controlling. Lives her life free as a bird, and you’re jealous of that because you don’t know how to do that. You will never figure that out. Instead, you are lost without the one thing that put you first in something. You are wandering aimlessly, scared of who you are and who you love. You know nothing about yourself because you are afraid._

_535614_

_You’re phenomenal at overthinking everything. So much so that you’re probably classified as neurotic under the definition of some. You overthink everything because you need to be perfect at everything, and that rarely ever happens. I’m quite confident that no matter what sort of validation you receive, you aren’t good enough. You aren’t good enough to belong to the family. You aren’t good enough to be where you truly want to be. Are you even good enough to be here? You won’t be able to keep up.  You’ll have a hard time fitting in because you never do, and you’ll wind up driving the people you’ve got in your clutches far, far away from you. The ship on learning how to make friends sailed without you on it a long time ago, and it’s not coming back for you. The clear path is going to turn into woods, and you need to get ready for it, because it’s coming. You’re never really found. You are lost in a crowd and always will be. And no matter what you try to say or do, it won’t be enough. This letter itself is not enough. I know it’s not enough, because nothing is never enough for you._

_332903_

_I don’t think you care enough. You ought to care more than you do about everything – you ought to give a damn about your family. They fucked you over? Welcome to the world. Everybody gets fucked over. You don’t care enough, and you joke more than you should. In fact, I think humor is just the blanket that you use to cover up how much you actually hate yourself, and it’s kinda pathetic. You’re the person who never looks enough, you never meet the standards that you set for yourself, you just continue to be this gigantic letdown over and over again and you wonder why you get fucked over? Why you have this distance between you and the people that are supposed to love you unconditionally? Care more. Maybe that’s the key to fixing shit._

_7480821_

_You’re afraid. Too afraid, and it’s not even of the things that normal people are afraid of – well, you do have those, but those aren’t the crippling ones. The hindering ones. You live your life in fear that you will fail, that you won’t meet the expectations people want to see you meet. You hold on too tightly to people because you’re afraid they’re going to let go and leave. You’re afraid, and what’s sad is you won’t ever do anything about it. You’re a slave to what you’re afraid of, and you know how to break the chains. You just choose not to._

_104620_

_There’s something wrong with you. I mean, there has to be, right? There’s no other explanation for what continues to happen, time after time after time. You’re the common denominator in everything; in all of the failed relationships, all of the complications that arise, all of it. There’s a giant sign flashing over your head that draws in all of the wrong people and you might not know how to turn it off, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still over your head. It’s your doing. Maybe what people think is true. Maybe there isn’t much to you, maybe you are what they say and think you are, nothing more and nothing less. You’ve never seen the harm in a stereotype, and it just might be because you are one and you know it, deep down. There’s no good to it, no matter what you say or try to own. It just means there is no substance to you, aside from the appearance that brings the wrong people in for the night and has always gotten you everything you want. See? That’s it, right there. You’re the one who wants it. You just do it to yourself. There’s nothing to be surprised by anymore._

_041359_

_What’s in a reputation? What does it say about us? Yours doesn’t say much about you, that’s for sure. You find one even remotely decent thing about yourself and you make that your entire personality, especially if it shows signs of keeping people in your life. You don’t even know who you are or if you’re likable without all of the masks that you wear, and who gives a fuck about anything if you’re not likable? You crave attention because attention means acceptance, and acceptance is validation, and without validation you are absolutely nothing. Actually, no, that’s a lie. You’re not nothing. And you do know who you are: you’re some kid who is a complete fuckshow. You’ve buried so much of the real you underneath this person that everyone seems to like and stay for so much better, you can’t even tell if anything smart about you still exists or if that was just another façade to keep people around. Are you sure you’re even real?_

_610081_

_Everybody likes you, but I don’t think that they would if they knew who you really were. I don’t think anybody would stay if they knew you really weren’t put together, that your life is just one tornado after another and you don’t bother to clean up the messes, you just live in them. You’re a fraud. You aren’t capable of doing great things, achieving things you worked for, you’re still just some kid who is running around acting like life’s all shits and giggles. Guess it’s a good thing that you’re shit at the whole open honesty thing, since you’ve got issues with being close to someone. Really, truly close, not just in the physical sense – that, you’re fine at. It’s the other that’s the problem. You suck at it and you never do anything to try and fix it. But, it all goes hand in hand. You’re good at keeping them all out because you’re really good at lying and covering your ass. It’s gotta be a lonely and miserable existence, being you._

_942611_

_It sucks being a perfectionist that’s not smart enough to actually execute things how you need for them to be. You need to win, all the time, and at everything, because you’ve got it trapped in your brain that not winning is the equivalent of not succeeding. Losing is failing, and you can’t afford to be a failure. You can’t afford to fail a math test just because it’s daunting and you certainly can’t afford to fail at the rest of your life just because it’s full of unknowns. You have to get this right. You have to, because if you don’t you’re just doomed to walking down the same roads you said you were going to do everything you could to avoid._

. . .

_122897:_

_It isn’t a bad thing to keep pushing the boundaries you have for yourself. That’s the only way you ever get better at things. I know I wish I could have some sort of control over my life – I’d classify myself as the free-bird type, and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Grass is always greener on the other side sorta thing. It’s okay to be afraid, though. About anything and everything. It just depends on if you’re going to do anything about your fear or if you’re just going to continue to let it rule your life. Sometimes shit doesn’t work out the way we think it will but it doesn’t mean we lose who we are entirely. You’re still in there even if you don’t have what defined you for so long anymore. Walk aimlessly. It’s not so much about the destination as it is all about the journey, ain’t it? Maybe you’ll end up somewhere even better than what you thought._

_And, for what it’s worth, I think freckles are super hot. Own that shit._

Isabelle’s eyes kept darting over the words scribbled on the back of her letter as she stood off to the side in the ballroom’s lobby, waiting for Jackie to retrieve her letter in a less-congested area of the room. She was a little unsure of what to make of the stranger’s reply. Flipping the page back to the front, it surprised her just how brutally honest she’d been about herself. The things she’d written had come from the depths of a place inside herself that she hardly ever acknowledged; her hand had started moving on its own accord and started stringing together the words before her brain had the opportunity to catch up. 

She supposed all of this was just a simple confirmation that the kindness of anonymity could be equally as strong as its cruelty. Even if this person had written the things they did all as a placating measure, somewhat like she had on the paper she’d been given when all of the notes had been redistributed at random, it still elicited a faint smile out of her as her eyes traced the shape of each letter.

“Got it!” Jackie’s voice stole her attention, Isabelle’s head lifting to see where it had come from. Jackie bounded towards her from the thick of the crowd, the folded-up piece of paper tight in her clutches.

“Did you read it?” Isabelle tilted her head in the direction of the paper once Jackie was within reach and could hear her adequately over the drone of chatter echoing in the lobby.

The look Jackie gave her was answer enough. “Not yet. There wasn’t a whole lot of elbow room up there. I checked to make sure they gave me the right one over the sea of grabby hands and then I booked it.”

Jackie propped up on the balls of her feet, scanning over the wall of people. “You wouldn’t have happened to spot the boys in the midst of all this madness, would ‘ya? I think Jack was on his phone during the whole thing the way he kept blowing mine up.”

“’Fraid not,” Isabelle responded, folding the piece of paper back up and stuffing it down inside her bag. “I don’t know if we’ll ever find them in this mess.”

“I’ll text them,” Jackie sighed as she reached for the phone that was tucked away in her back pocket. “See if they’ve left yet or if they’re still lurking somewhere around here.”

Jackie’s fingers navigated through her phone at a break-neck pace, Isabelle only half-watching. Every few seconds she stole a glance out into the lobby to see if she was able to spot the faces they were looking for amidst the swarm of bodies all heading in their dozen different directions.

Jackie was mid-text when Isabelle caught sight of someone approaching them, a pair of tall blondes that ultimately threw her off. Her mind flashed to a dangerous place before returning to reality, concluding in a split second that it was what it always tended to be: someone that appeared to be walking towards them but was really just trying to escape the masses.

It wasn’t until the two of them were within hearing distance that it registered with Isabelle. They were walking with intent, and they were indeed headed straight for them. By that point, it was too late to grill Jackie without being overheard.

“Jackie?”

At the sound of her name falling from the lips of the taller of the two girls, Jackie abandoned her text message (and nearly dropped her phone). Her head shot up in surprise, whipping around only to be met with a smile. “Hey, Leven!” she said, the shock still lingering in her voice even if she had reined in most of her composure. 

“Hey!” Leven skipped ahead of her friend, smile brilliant as she sidled up next to Jackie. “Didn’t know you were coming to this.”

“What can I say? You offered up a good idea on a silver platter – it was this or sit around and do homework.”

“Smart choice,” Leven agreed with a wink. She pointed over her shoulder at her friend, with the blunt cut bangs and hair a color that looked more like honey next to Leven’s platinum. “This is my friend Jennifer, she’s the one that I told you was helping put this thing together.”

Jennifer immediately shook her head, both hands lifting in mock arrest. “Oh, _god_ no,” she deflected insistently. “Don’t let her fool you, I didn’t help put anything together. I’m not even trusted to make macaroni for dinner.”

That triggered small giggles from Isabelle and Jackie. Leven, however, was stoic, green eyes widening. “She’s not kidding.”

Both of Jennifer’s lips pressed together in a thin line. “Yeah, apparently when you get the reputation of the girl who nearly set Fluor on fire, it sticks. And no one ever lets you live it down.”

“Some of us don’t wish to die in an inferno.”

“It was just a little smoke,” Jennifer whined, and Leven rolled her eyes.

“The fire brigade came out.”

A beat of silence passed over the four girls, Jackie and Isabelle exchanging looks. The lightbulb seemed to come on behind her blue-green eyes, a small squeak escaping Jackie’s chest as she gestured out towards Isabelle. “Oh! This is my roommate, Isabelle. Iz, this is Leven.”

“The girl from statistics,” Isabelle nodded, hoisting the corners of her mouth up into what she hoped was a friendly enough smile. Girls like this were always tricky territory, and usually, she’d been holding onto Kalia’s hand every other time she’d had to make introductions like this. Thank god for Jackie sufficing as a substitute. “Nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you too – you’re a…freshman, like Jackie?”

“Sure am.”

Leven turned to Jennifer, her index finger moving back and forth between Jackie and Isabelle. “Jen, these are the luckiest freshmen in the history of the world – they’re in Irani.”

Jennifer’s eyes seemed to bug out of her head, breath catching in her throat. “Irani?!” she repeated, bewildered. “Goddamn, you guys lucked out. We had to do a fuckin’ room assignment dance the night before housing lotteries went out to please the gods; I was fully prepared to drop out and become a busker if I wound up in another dorm for the third year in a row.”

“You guys are roommates?” Jackie asked.

“Yup,” Leven replied, popping the ‘p’ on the end. “Have been for two years now.”

“No one else is willing to deal with the girl on fire,” Jen said dryly, adding in a display of outstretched jazz-hands for effect.

Leven’s blonde ponytail swished over her face as she looked around them, eyes settling back on Jackie and her eyebrows knitting up in question. “You guys waiting for somebody?”

“Not really,” was Jackie’s deflated response. “A few guys on our hall were supposed to meet us at this thing, but I think finding them at this point is a lost cause.”

Isabelle couldn’t help but to watch Leven and Jen closely, the two of them carrying on a conversation entirely in each other’s eyes at the speed of a lightning strike. It reminded her of the way she and Kalia used to communicate, the way that she and Jackie seemed to operate more and more these days. Leven’s hands settled on her hips as she turned back to face the two of them. “Well, we were actually head to grab coffee at this little place off campus, but we’ve got room for two more if you guys wanna come with?”

It was Isabelle and Jackie’s turn to glance over at one another, the two of them quickly responding with the nonchalant shrug of their shoulders. “Sure,” Isabelle answered for them.

“Excellent.”

Leven drove a Jeep Wrangler, parked on the street behind the ballroom. “Sorry about the mess in the back,” Leven apologized as Jackie and Isabelle climbed their way into the backseat. There was a flood of receipts and scrap pages of notebook paper, as well a tipped over shoebox that had been filled with fabric squares now spilling its contents out into the floorboards with everything else.

“It’s nowhere near as messy as mine,” Isabelle claimed as she strapped on her seatbelt. “My car was so cluttered that my mom said I could go without my freshman year.”

Jen, up in the passenger seat, swiveled around so her chin was resting on the seat back. “You sound about like me,” she chimed. “It’s why Lev drives us everywhere. We’re basically a package deal these days.”

“Or you just take an Uber,” Leven quickly added, closing the driver’s door and twisting her keys in the ignition. “Half of that mess is hers.”

“You’re a design major too?” Isabelle asked, holding up one of the fabric squares that she’d picked up before sitting on.

Jennifer just laughed as she spun back around in her seat. “God no,” Leven denied. “Jen’s communication; if it’s made of paper, it’s probably hers.”

“Yeah, I don’t believe in keeping cohesive and color coordinated notes like this one over here,” Jen chirped, thumb tipping in Leven’s direction. “I’m the type of person who will just write shit down on a scrap piece of paper. Or on my body. It’s a good thing permanent markers aren’t legitimately permanent, otherwise my hands would be an actual rainbow.”

“I think you just sent Jackie into shock,” Isabelle teased, leaning over and nudging Jackie’s kneecap. “Her planner is her Bible.”

“My kinda girl,” Leven said, meeting their eyes in the rearview mirror.

Jen had her phone plugged into Leven’s aux cord, an old school Kesha playlist blasting through the speakers at a mind-numbing volume. Leven also rolled down all of the windows, making up for the fact that she kept her doors and roof on no matter what season of the year, the wind rushing into the car as they drove off campus and out into the city. Technically, this qualified as Isabelle’s first big adventure in LA, since there hadn’t been much Jack and Josh had recruited them into doing that took place off of USC’s campus.

She stole tiny looks over at Jackie periodically during the ride, mostly in search of reassurance that they hadn’t done something completely stupid by trusting what were basically two total strangers. Jackie didn’t seem fazed any by it; if Jackie, the most meticulous person Isabelle had ever met wasn’t bothered, then she’d do her best to roll with it and not worry.

The girls wound up at a place called The Original Coffee Pantry, a diner that sat two steps above a Waffle House sitting off an interstate exit. It was a small building smelling of maple syrup and coffee, the lights inside bright and a jukebox sitting off in the corner that was meant entirely for show – the radio station playing overhead had the task of spinning through songs that dated back to the eighties. For Isabelle, it was a significant step backwards into her familiar. Everything in the room felt like Georgia despite being in the heart of downtown LA.

Jen ushered them towards a booth in the back. She and Leven occupied one side, leaving Jackie and Isabelle to the other. Isabelle slid in, her shoulder occasionally brushing the floor-to-ceiling window as she moved her bag beside her and dug out her phone. Inside, she could hear her letter from the event rustling around, probably getting bent and dented in every way imaginable.

Oh, well. Words were just words.

“I found this place when I was a baby freshie,” Jen explained, absentmindedly flicking the corners of the laminated menu. “They do all day breakfast, which comes in really handy when you’re buzzed or pulling an all-nighter and need some good old-fashioned comfort food. 24 hours a day, an all you can eat pancake special that’s never not a special, and the best cup of coffee you’ll have off-campus.”

“On campus it’s Ground Zero, all the way,” Leven chimed in as she glanced up from the menu. “You guys tried it yet?”

Isabelle and Jackie responded simultaneously.

“Nope.”

“Not yet.”

“God, their milkshakes are to die for,” Jen drawled. “And you can add a shot of espresso to just about anything, which will be your best friend at some point or later.”

“You guys are like a wealth of knowledge,” Isabelle commented off to the side. Abstract, but entirely accurate. So far, everybody that she’d befriended on campus had wound up being beneficial to her in some way, shape, or form. All the right people kept falling into her lap, like God was purposefully knocking them off the tops of the trees right as she passed underneath them. Jen’s lips curled back into a smile.

“Then I guess it’s a very, very good thing that we all bumped into each other then, yeah?”

“Stick with us and we’ll make sure you guys know what’s what around campus,” Leven laughed. “Seriously, if Katniss Everdeen over here can manage to pull through for three years back-to-back, you can do just about anything you set your mind to. Surviving really isn’t that hard here. It’s living that some people find a little tricky.”

“But,” Jen interjected, her pointer finger uncurling from the fist sitting atop her propped-up elbow and extending towards Jackie and Isabelle. “As long as you’ve got people like us, living isn’t gonna be a problem whatsoever.”


	3. let the games begin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello hello lovelies! i come with good news: this is not gonna be another 10k monstrosity! and school is almost over for the semester, which means updates will hopefully be coming your way on a much more *regular* schedule. and, in case you were wondering, i totally failed at nanowrimo. the vlog is nearly 40 minutes long, which is a lot considering i didn't win, lol. i survived the semester and really, that's more than i could ask for at this point. now i can just sit back, write my fics and not worry about checking blackboard every 5 minutes for grades. the tru dream life.
> 
> chapter title is from taylor swift's '...ready for it?' accepting friend applications on instagram @tributediaries, where i edit thg and scream about how this cast still owns me. happy reading. xx

Football was more than just a big deal at USC. It was a way of life. Coming from the heart of the south where football was practically its own religion, Isabelle was accustomed to the culture. In fact, she’d done good to pick her school partially based on whether or not they had a football team that was actually decent. 

Jackie, on the other hand, hadn’t, and it came out of left field when Jack and Josh stopped by their room on the eve of the first home game to deliver their own game plan for the next day.

“Tailgating?” Jackie echoed partially in disbelief.

“Yes, your hearing is still impeccable. _Tailgating_. Welcome to college, Jac.”

Isabelle was full of questions, her excitement growing with every answer she accumulated from an increasingly puzzled Jack and Josh. “What time do tailgates normally start?”

“Six—”

“So we’d need to be up and moving no later than five?” That question earned her bewildered and horrified looks from the other three in the room, Isabelle cowering slightly under the weight of their glares.

“Five?!” Jackie shrieked.

“Hell nah, Isabelle, just because tailgating starts at six doesn’t mean _we_ start at six,” Jack shot down. “We normally don’t head out until ten. The only people who are ever out tailgating that fuckin’ early are people who are trying to make money off of us already-poor college kids.”

“Or diehard fans,” Josh added. “Which we are not.”

“What happened to school spirit?” Isabelle retorted.

Both of Jack’s hands settled on his hips as he stared back in defiance. “I’ll have you know that last year I painted the entire half of my upper body cardinal and gold for homecoming. I’m just not looking to accidentally create a crime scene in the showers again.”

Isabelle unfolded her arms in resignation. School spirit had been a large part of her character back in high school, especially considering her status as a jock. She had won two senior superlatives: most athletic, and most school spirit. While she’d picked the former and passed off the other to the runner-up, she still took pride in her school and showed out for every sports event she possibly could. She might not have been as social as her other friends, but Isabelle was very much a team player. She liked being a part of something. It gave her purpose. If she wasn’t the one on the field, then she was in the stands rooting for the ones that were, a lesson that had been engrained in her by none other than Elina Fuhrman – _if you want people to show up for you, you’ve got to show up for them, too._

“You guys do have to wear school colors, though,” Josh continued. “SAC gives out citations if they spot you wearing anything other than USC.”

“Will my hair color be an acceptable alternative?” Jackie pointed up at her top-knot for emphasis. “Because I don’t look good in red, and as far as I’m concerned, yellow does not deserve to be a color.”

“Have that argument with SAC, shortcake.”

“Oh, I will.” They all knew very well that she would.

Isabelle dragged Jackie out of bed around nine on Saturday morning, Jackie grumbling that it wasn’t prom and there wasn’t any sort of prep she needed to partake in to go to a football game. Isabelle, on the other hand, felt as though she had a thousand different things to do before the boys stopped by at ten to pick them up. She loaned Jackie one of her black USC racerbacks that a family member had gotten her after she’d made her USC decision public knowledge to keep her sporting a little school pride, opting for a cardinal-colored tank that was lingering at the bottom of her drawers for herself. Isabelle braided both of their hair, packed and triple-checked through their bags, and sprayed herself and Jackie down in the shower with sunscreen. Jackie sat around and ate a bowl of cereal as she watched the news, seemingly content to let Isabelle run around and get all of their ducks in a row.

For the first time ever, the boys were right on time and knocking on the apartment door as the clock on Isabelle’s phone switched to 10:00. That was what Isabelle accepted as a sign that the day was going to be a fun one, more fun than anything else she could have done in the place of spending the hours doing psych homework.

Josh had a truck, the only appropriate (and as far as Isabelle was concerned, acceptable) tailgating vehicle that the four of them all piled into and set off for Trousdale Parkway in. Downtown was buzzing with anticipation and activity leading up to the first home game of the season, so much so that it took a great deal of time for Josh to find an empty place on the lawn to park.

“Welcome to your first USC tailgate, ladies,” he announced as he put the gear shift into park, rolling back slightly on the brakes. Isabelle mirrored the wide grin Josh was donning as she glanced into the backseat where Jack and Jackie were, both eyebrows raised suggestively.

“Now what?” Jackie asked.

“Now,” Jack responded, unbuckling his seatbelt in one fluid motion. “We have fun.”

Being at a school where football was a big deal meant that tailgating was also a big deal, accurately reflected by the number of people milling around the tailgate. Jack and Josh lowered the hatch on the truck bed, working to adjust their speakers so they were sitting right on the requirement line while the girls climbed into the truck bed and started unloading coolers and chairs onto the ground. The boys had confessed they were wanderers when they tailgated, only bringing the bare necessities and traveling around for the majority of the time to bum food from some of the tents or find games to join in on. That had been more than fine with Isabelle, happy to go with the flow of things. Jackie, of course, was wildly out of her element at a tailgate (politicians didn’t exactly host barbecues out of their truck beds) and was merely going along with whatever everyone around her was doing, so there weren’t any complaints out of her.

After getting everything set up and eating the sandwiches that Isabelle had made for them, Jack and Josh suggested that they go walk around and see if they could find people that they knew or a tent with more food – Isabelle hadn’t trusted the boys to supply anything edible that they didn’t already buy prepared. Jack and Josh took the lead, walking ahead of Isabelle and Jackie as they weaved in and out of the throngs of people trying to get away with games awfully similar to beer pong and balancing plates pile high with pick-ups. The girls were content to hang back, elbows threaded and looped together while they took everything in and kept their conversations to themselves.

Every set up looked nearly identical in Isabelle’s book: tents, cars, tables filled with drinks and food, people standing in clumps as they talked to one another or danced, everyone and everything decked out in Trojan cardinal and gold. As a freshman on a college campus located in one of the world’s busiest cities, she was at the slight disadvantage of not knowing the hundreds of faces they passed. Recognizing someone was a fluke at best, especially considering how many people in the city all seemed to resemble one another, but Isabelle could have sworn as they passed by one particular tailgate that the blonde leaning up against the foldable table drinking out of a black tumbler was someone she knew.

She did a quick double take, stopping dead in her tracks to Jackie’s surprise when she realized it hadn’t been a fluke at all. “Leven?”

The high blonde ponytail swished as Leven’s head turned, lighting up when she saw Isabelle and Jackie standing only a few feet away. “Iz, Jackie, hey!” she sang, walking around the side of the table to approach them.

“Jack! Josh!” Jackie shouted to flag them down, both of the boys spinning around and retreating back at the sound of her voice. They might not have been friends for long, but there was no question as to who called all of the shots.

Leven embraced Isabelle in a hug “Are you guys by yourselves?” she asked, brushing her bangs to the side as she stepped over to hug Jackie.

“Nah, we’re here with a couple of guys from our hall,” Jackie reassured after she pulled away from Leven’s hug, thumb jutting out in the direction of the boys.

Leven’s eyes lit up, an eyebrow kinking inquisitively. “Ooh, boys.”

“It’s not like that.” Leven gave a slow nod in response, even though her disbelief was still written all over her face. Jackie’s face fell as she reached over to slap Leven’s wrist. “Mind outta the gutter, Rambin.”

“Whatever you say.”

“What’s going on?” Jack made his way over, stopping in front of Jackie. His attention quickly shifted over to Leven, and it was obvious to Isabelle that everything in his brain had been wiped. Leven was drop-dead gorgeous even in a pair of blue jeans and one of the USC team shirts that the bookstore carried in bulk. Isabelle couldn’t blame him for the reaction.

“We just stopped by to say hi,” Jackie explained, gesturing out towards Leven.

Leven smiled right on cue. “Hey. Leven.”

“Jack,” Jack replied, his voice higher than normal.

“And that’s Josh,” Isabelle continued for him, her head tilting off to the side where Josh had stopped on his walk back at the sight of a familiar face and wrapped himself up in a conversation.

Leven nodded, one of her fingers absently tracing over the top of her tumbler’s lid. “So, are you guys floating or are you set up somewhere?”

“Both, apparently,” Jackie summarized. “We’re just kinda doing whatever at the moment.”

“Well, you’re more than welcome to come hang out with us for a little bit if you want to,” Leven offered with a smile. “Jen’s helping out some of the guys with the barbecue; we’ll have more than enough if you guys haven’t eaten yet.”

Jackie was just about to answer that they were alright, it hadn’t even been a half-hour since they’d eaten their sandwiches, but Jack cut her right off before she could get her mouth open. “That would be fantastic,” he raved. Leven’s smile only deepened as she grabbed a hold of Isabelle’s wrist and traipsed back off to the tent.

“Who’s your friend, Lev?” One of the guys next to the table that Leven had been chatting up right when Isabelle had spotted her piped up, extending out his drink for emphasis. Isabelle felt his eyes scan over her like this was the airport screening, having to resist the urge to roll her eyes. Being at a party school meant there were plenty of his kind skulking around, and Isabelle had been lucky enough not to bump into any so far. Her luck had to run out eventually, though, and she figured this was that moment.

“Off limits,” she responded brightly as they passed by. Isabelle watched as the guy lifted his other hand in mock arrest, bringing the can up to his lips. “Ignore him,” Leven said from the side of her mouth. “We don’t claim them, but since Zander’s still friends with some of the guys he met during his failed frat phase, we can’t exactly turn them away. Mark’s barbecue is the only thing that we have connecting us to them.”

Isabelle nodded in affirmation. The names being thrown at her left and right seemed to belong more to entities than they did actual people, based purely off the fact that she had no idea who they were, but she figured Leven would introduce them all in due time. That seemed to be a hidden talent of hers. Leven knew more people than Isabelle had seen in her life.

Jackie caught up with Isabelle and Leven once Josh had arrived, leaving him and Jack up under the tent with some of the other guys. Isabelle was alerted of her presence at the feeling of Jackie’s arm slipping back around hers and linking at the elbow. “You guys want something to drink?” Leven asked.

“Sure,” Isabelle answered for the both of them.

Leven led them through a narrow passage made by the parked cars, the smell of charcoal growing closer as they walked. They made it around to the other side of the cars, where several people were flanked around a portable grill and sitting on coolers. Leven strode over to one of the coolers, where a blond boy was using it as a chair. “Zander,” she barked, the boy looking up at her innocently. “Off my cooler.”

“You told me to keep all of the Pikes out, I’m just doin’ what you asked.” Leven waved her free hand dismissively, and he stood up obligingly.

As he stepped over to the side, his eyes fell on the girls. Isabelle glanced up right about the time that his sights moved onto her, her eyes meeting his for a split second before she looked away. They were strikingly blue, clear like ice and sharp enough to cut straight through her. They did for a split-second, Isabelle feeling the sucker punch slam right to her gut and knock the wind out of her before she realized that they weren’t _those_ eyes staring back at her.

“What do your lady friends want?” he asked as he flipped open the lid on the cooler.

“Non-alcoholics, for starters,” Leven said, the edges of her voice like glass. “I’m not getting busted for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”

“Those are really, really big words, Lev.”

“They wouldn’t be if you read a book every once in a while.” He opened his mouth to protest, but Leven shot him a glare that brought his lips back together in an instant. “And don’t try to tell me otherwise; the last book you finished was The Rainbow Fish, and I know because your sister told me as much.”

“Do you really have to bust my ass in front of your friends?” he pouted.

Leven pretended to ponder the thought for a moment. “I guess not, especially since you’re not their type.”

“I am everyone’s type.”

“What do you guys want to drink?” Leven ignored his comment, facing Isabelle and Jackie head on.   

Jackie shrugged. “Water’s fine.”

“What do you have in there with caffeine?” Isabelle asked, hugging her arms over her chest.

“Sprite, Coke, Diet Coke, Mountain Dew,” the boy prattled off straight from memory. “If you’re sticking with the non-alcoholic agenda.”

“She is,” Leven interjected swiftly. “They’re freshmen.”

His eyes widened slightly as he fished around in the ice for a drink. “Damn, Leven, you really do know the entire student body.”

He pulled out a bottle of water, throwing it underhand to Leven who neatly caught it with her free hand before passing it off to Jackie. “Jackie and I have statistics together. Isabelle’s her roommate.”

“Still.” Blue eyes landed back on Isabelle, his eyebrows lifting. “You never said what you wanted?” he prompted her, hand motioning down inside the cooler.

“Uh…a Diet Coke,” Isabelle finally decided. His hand plunged back down into the ice to find one for her. 

His hands made a swinging motion once he retrieved one, his nonverbal way of letting her know he was getting ready to throw it her way. “I’m Alexander,” he said right as he gently tossed the drink. Isabelle’s hands were cupped and ready to intercept, catching it mid-air.

“Isabelle.”

“So that must make you Jackie,” Alexander noted as his eyes shifted over to her. Jackie nodded once, twisting off the cap on her water bottle. “Freshmen, huh?”

“Luckiest freshmen on campus.” Jen materialized out of nowhere, balancing a paper plate in one hand as the other encircled Leven’s shoulders in a hug from behind. “They’re in Irani.”

“How the hell—”

“That’s what we said,” Jen finished for Alexander with a languid shrug. She patted Leven’s collarbone lightly, Leven’s head twisting to get a full glimpse of her.  “Hey, Mark’s taking stuff off the grill. Better go now before the Pikes figure it out.”

“Shit, thanks.” Jen pulled away from her one-sided hug, sauntering off between the cars to where their tent was set up. “You girls like burgers?” Leven asked.

“Hell yeah,” Isabelle replied.

“Go ahead and fix a plate,” Leven said, pointing towards the portable grill and clump of people that were still surrounding it. “Before the frat boys plow you down. C’mon, Jac, we’ll go get your friends.” With that, she and Jackie followed close behind Jen to where they’d left Jack and Josh to fend for themselves.

“I’ll go with ‘ya,” Alexander told Isabelle. “She wasn’t kidding about the frat boys running somebody over in the name of Mark’s food.”

Mark – or, at least, who Isabelle assumed was Mark, based upon the ‘kiss the grill-master’ apron he was wearing over his USC shirt – had made enough food to feed a crowd, just like Leven had promised. There was another foldable table set up adjacent to the portable grill with all sorts of food, including the burgers that had just come off of the grill. Alexander let Isabelle go first, following along behind her slowly as she went down the table.

“So, if you’re a freshman, does this mean this is your first home game?” he asked in an attempt to break the silence between them.

“Yep,” Isabelle replied as she tried to be sparing with how much of the spinach and artichoke dip she spooned out onto her paper plate.

“You guys sitting in the student section tonight?”

“Is that where the season ticket seats are?”

“Usually, yeah.” He smiled as he shook out a few chips onto his plate. “That’s where we like to sit; Dayo’s most likely to see us if we sit there.”

“Dayo?” Isabelle repeated, eyebrows furrowing together as she glanced up from the table.

For a moment, Alexander stared at her with a puzzled expression before it seemed to click with him that she was new to all of this and genuinely had no idea what he was talking about. He spun around, thumbs pointing at the back of his mock USC jersey that she finally realized was a jersey. The name above the giant 14 read ‘ _OKENIYI._ ’ “Dayo’s our running back,” he explained as he turned back to face her. “He also happens to be my roommate.”

“Who is too good to be your roommate,” Leven interrupted as she returned back into view, Jackie and the boys in tow. “Dayo’s the one we actually like, Alexander’s just kinda…well, he comes with the territory.”

Alexander rolled his eyes, hand jutting out and latching onto Leven’s wrist as he pulled her in and tucked her under his arm despite her efforts to get away. “Gosh, love you too, Lev,” he mocked dryly as he leaned in and kissed her on the temple. The second he loosened his grip the slightest bit, Leven jumped back in recoil and stuck her tongue out at him.

“You are the worst.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

Isabelle was grateful for the return of her friends, sticking close to Jackie as they headed over to the blanket that Jen was sitting on as she ate through her mountain of food. Alexander was nice, but there was something about the crowd that Leven and Jen opted to roll with that put her slightly out of her element. It reminded her of the days when Kalia was eager to mingle with anyone and everyone and dragged her along with, often leaving Isabelle to awkwardly try and keep up while they moved at full speed ahead and spoke a social language that Isabelle never seemed to fully understand. Having Jackie by her side at least made things easier, since it meant she was no longer in a one-man boat.

The next few hours were spent hanging out on the blanket, picking through their food and listening to the music one of the nearby cars was somehow getting away with playing. Leven painted Jackie, Isabelle, and Jen’s faces, little cardinal and gold dots surrounding their eyes while the boys all tossed the football around, other people coming and going through their tents for food. Jackie also sent the SAC people running away with their tail in between their legs after vehemently proving that she was wearing USC gear, Jack and Josh doing their best to conceal their laughs and ‘I told you so’ remarks. 

Eventually Jack and Josh were ready to head on, eager to return to the truck before they had to move it off to one of the parking structures in preparation for the game. Leven and Jen waved goodbye to the girls and sent them all on their way armed with extra cookies.

On their walk back, Isabelle nudged Jackie in the shoulder. “Thoughts on your first tailgate?” she asked once Jackie glanced over at her, a newfound hop in her step carrying her forward.

Jackie shrugged. “I had fun.”

“Enough fun that you’ll wanna come back and do it again for the next home game?”

“Talk to me tomorrow when I know for sure that my shoulders aren’t sunburned.”

* * *

Alexander wasn’t the biggest fan of the library. Sure, he was at USC to learn, but he’d always felt out of place in what most would deem a typical learning environment. Libraries were not made for people like him. Libraries weren’t for people who liked to be loud and spontaneous and devil-may-care. Libraries were for people who liked discipline, quiet, and were probably on the brink of a school-related breakdown.

Three years at USC and Alexander had never gotten to that place mentally. He was perhaps the only person out of all his friends that could say that. Everyone else that he knew had already experienced a couple of crises as directly caused by academia. He didn’t really understand what exactly had spared him from that fate. It wasn’t because he didn’t care, he cared a _lot_ – being at USC had been a game changer for him and he liked where he was, and staying on top of his grades was the way to stay there.

He liked his major and he was good at his major, so he assumed that had something to do with it. He also figured it had a lot to do with his major falling on the more fantastical end of the spectrum. Music industry wasn’t exactly all about living off of delusions and furthering yourself through a fantasy, but it wasn’t grounded in realism either. Alexander had spent all of his high school career trying to be somebody he wasn’t, and college was when he gave the pretending a funeral. He loved music, and trying to convince everyone (including himself) that that wasn’t where his heart rested became pointless. Majoring in such a niche area had felt like the right decision, even if it was a long shot in seeing it come to fruition after graduation.

_Dreams don’t work unless you do_. The simple mantra he had used to stonewall any doubt that attempted to creep in. He believed in it, too – if it wasn’t true, then he figured he wouldn’t already be in his junior year in the same program he’d started out in.

It was that work that brought him to the library. He didn’t have any classes on Tuesdays until five, and one of his friends had lured him over to McCarthy Quad for lunch. Not feeling up to running tracks into the ground between Webb and Trousdale Parkway and the weather not kind enough to work outside in, Alexander settled on spending the next few hours in Leavey.

His initial plan was to rent a study room and take a nap. However, not frequenting the library meant he didn’t have much of a clue about how things actually operated; apparently, study rooms stayed booked out days and weeks in advance. Plan B was to find a secluded area somewhere, put his earbuds in and mess around with some of his abandoned GarageBand projects to see if there was anything worth salvaging.

He spent about a half hour immersed in what he was doing, up until he found himself sitting in the middle of a game of library hide and seek as conducted by what had to be underclassmen. _It’s the fuckin’ library,_ he wanted to snap at them. _There’s an entire quad for you to play around on right outside these four walls. Or a very busy street._

Saying something would have been the ultimate case of the pot calling the kettle black. At one point in time, he probably would’ve jumped right into the game. Hell, he probably would’ve played along now had he been with friends. With four massive floors, Leavey was one of the biggest buildings on campus that Alexander had been in, perfect for all kinds of fuckery.

He didn’t have time for it today. Junior year, as promised by so many of his upperclassmen friends in the last two years, was when shit hit the fan. It started off like any other year and then out of nowhere, stomped on the accelerator hard enough to result in whiplash. His free time was limited, and he was doing his best to use every second of it wisely. So, he folded his laptop shut, grabbed his bag and went off in search for another low-populated area on the first floor.

Finding an empty cluster of chairs or a relatively unoccupied table proved to be harder than he’d assumed; apparently, everyone had the same schedule as him and this was their free time. He weaved in and out of the aisles for a few minutes before he finally spotted a table off near the back that only had one occupant, a brunette that was hunched over the pile of books in front of her.

He approached her, leaning down slightly so he was within her line of sight. “Hey,” he said as he waved, the motion startling her. She jumped back, the pen in her hand clattering to the ground. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”

It was then that he saw the girl’s face and realized he knew her. It was one of the girls that had crashed their tailgate the previous weekend, specifically, the brunette that had been attached to Leven’s hip the entire time. “Jesus,” she muttered under her breath as she bent down to pick up her pen.

“Sorry,” he repeated innocently once she sat back up, his free hand raising to signal he came in peace. “It’s Isabelle, right?”

“Yeah.” She tucked some of her hair behind her ear, looking up at him. He watched her eyes scan over his face, trying to figure out where she knew him from. “Oh,” she said, the light finally turning on. “You’re…Leven’s friend. From the tailgate.”

“Alexander.”

She nodded, as if confirming it to herself. “Yes.”

“You mind if I sit here?” Alexander gestured to the chair in front of him. “Everywhere else is kinda full.”

She seemed somewhat flustered by his question, her attention bouncing off of her textbooks to her laptop and back up to him in an erratic cycle. “Uh, yeah, sure,” the words stumbled out of her. “I mean – no, you can definitely sit.”

“Do I make you nervous or somethin’?” he asked amusedly as he pulled out the chair, setting his bag down on the table.

This time her response was confident. “No.” She sighed, her shoulders dropping as she motioned towards the books in front of her. “I’m just a little all over the place trying to keep track of everything. My professors are having a grand time burying us in busy work.”

“What are you majoring in?”

“Psych. Which, I enjoy, but when you have to take eighteen hours, it starts to lose some of its sparkle.”

“Eighteen hours?”

“Trying to get all my gen eds out of the way as fast I can,” she replied. “That way if the psych thing falls through, I’ve got time to dabble and not waste a shit ton of money.”

“Sounds like you’ve got everything planned down to a T then,” Alexander noted.

One of her shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Because in a past life, I was an actress. Really, it’s just me trying to give myself something to follow along with so I’ve got an idea of what the hell I’m doing. I don’t _do_ winging it very well.” She paused, and then, “Or, well, I used to. Then I got here.”

“Well,” Alexander began as he opened his laptop back up. “For what it’s worth, fall semester of freshman year sucks for everybody.” Her eyes snapped onto him, the cold glare she was wielding enough to puncture his skin. “Hey, don’t hate the messenger. If anything, you can look at the messenger as proof that it’s survivable.”

“I believe you,” she confessed after a beat of silence. “I’m just…”

“Adjusting still?” he finished for her.

“Something like that.”

Alexander smiled. “You’ll get there eventually. Don’t stress about it.”

He watched as the corners of her lips twitched, threatening to curl up in a half-smile. “Thanks.”

He let the conversation die out so she could return back to her homework, diving back into the GarageBand project he’d been tweaking and experimenting with. Occasionally, he felt his eyes tug away from the computer screen and onto Isabelle. Watching her work was oddly fascinating; she was just as engrossed with the pages of her textbook as he was with his music programs, but it all seemed to flash across her face as she took it in. _She_ was oddly fascinating, Isabelle, the pull towards her hard for Alexander to ignore. Having as strong of a personality as his meant that he was usually the one drawing others in, not the other way around. It was new for him and he wasn’t sure what to make of it. He just had to remember not to stare for long. 

They were, after all, as good as strangers.


	4. somethin' like the summer (kinda like a hurricane)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> today was the last day of the semester and i have never been so thankful in my frickin' life. where's that trisha paytas tweet that's like "I'M FREEEE WORST EXPERIENCE OF MY FUCKING LIFE" because MOOD. i am thisclose to having a total conniption because my computer just LOVES to restart all the time without my permission and i keep losing work that i have done specifically for this story so the next update will be written on a stone tablet provided to me by god and left on mount sinai for all to read, leave feedback in the dirt!! all seriousness, though, updates should come a lot more consistently (and quickly) now that i'm on break and actually have time to write. i want to make some significant headway with this story since it's shaping up to be behemoth + i just really enjoy writing it, so please pretty please leave me a comment once you finish reading and let me know what you like, what you wanna see more of, etc.! after this chapter, the big 8 will have all been introduced and the real fun can begin :))
> 
> chapter title is from bryce vine's 'drew barrymore.' if you want even more consistent thg content come party with me on instagram @tributediaries. happy reading. xx

Dayo Okeniyi might have been one of the big men on campus, being the Trojan’s running back and all, but there was no denying that his game was a lot weaker than it could have been.

Girls were never at the forefront of his mind. He had other things to worry about, what with keeping his grades up in order to stay on the field and putting one hundred and ten percent every time he stepped on the field. Having a little prominence on campus meant that the girls usually just came to him. He never had to try hard in order to get them to show up, and letting that fly for nearly three years had made him rusty. Especially so when he realized that he had absolutely no idea how to impress a girl in one of his business classes who didn’t even know of his existence.

That was how he found himself sprawled out on Leven and Jen’s couch, one arm behind his head and the other hugging a pillow. Leven assumed the role of therapist, sitting in the floor with her back against the couch and knees folded up to her chest, balancing her sketchbook on her thighs as she worked on the sketch of another outfit while simultaneously listening to Dayo’s rambling. “Lev, help me,” he groaned when he felt like she was no longer paying him adequate attention.

“What do you want me to do?”

“You’re a girl,” he pointed out, Leven’s pen stopping dead on the page as she turned to glare at him.

“Thanks for noticing.”

Dayo’s face fell. “You know what I mean.” Leven returned back to her sketch, Dayo’s line of sight lifting to the ceiling. “You know how the female brain works. Tell me what she’s thinking, what the hell I ought to do. Anything.”

“Okay, well have you tried talking to her?”

Silence. “Not exactly,” Dayo answered uncomfortably.

Leven shot him a thin-lipped smile. “Well, then, that’s your first step.”

“Yeah, but how do I _impress_ her? Impressions are everything.”

Leven sighed, placing her pen down in her book and sitting it on the coffee table. “Look, you’re Dayo Okeniyi. You’re our fucking running back, most everybody knows who you are. You’re…you’re smart, you’re handsome, you’re well-spoken, the only thing that you _don’t_ really have a check mark beside is the fashion bit. There’s nothing there that’s not to like; you just need to pull yourself together long enough to get a few words out and you’ll have her hooked around your finger just like the rest of the student body.” Leven noticed that he was now sitting straight up, his eyes wide. “What?”

“Fashion,” he repeated, the enlightenment dancing in his eyes. “Lev, you’re a design major, you can totally help me with that—”

“Whoa,” Leven interrupted. “Let’s slow our roll here.”

“No, that’s exactly what I need! You can be like my fashion advisor, help me pick out my outfits and tell me what I should never wear ever again. Be my Stacy London and all that shit.” He slid up on the couch so he was right behind her, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Lev. Please. I need you.”

“What’s in it for me?” she sighed.

Dayo frowned. “What, doing it out of the goodness of your heart isn’t an option?”

“Not when I’m eighteen hours deep in arts credits, trying to make sure Jen doesn’t accidentally burn down Cowlings, and attempting to maintain a social life of my own.”

“Fair enough,” Dayo finally conceded after a brief moment of the two intensely staring at the other. “How about…if you be my fashion advisor for the semester, I’ll offer myself up as tribute to be a male model any time you need one.”

Leven bit her lip – Dayo knew he’d gotten her right where he needed her, considering how many times over the last two semesters Leven had been frazzled to the point of pulling her hair out and erupting into stressed sobs over not being able to find someone willing to volunteer as a male model for any of her design presentations.

“Alright,” she huffed. “Alright! I’ll be your fashion Yoda or whatever, but I have one condition.”

“Anything.”

“You aren’t allowed to argue with me on any of it. No matter what I say, you can’t fight me on it – you have to listen and do what I tell you.”

“Deal.”

Leven nodded curtly, before leaning forward to grab her sketchbook and pulling it back into her lap. “You’re the best, Lev,” Dayo reminded her as he laid back down on the couch, pillow coming to rest on top of his stomach.

“I know.”

* * *

 **IMESSAGE**  
Twin #1   
Tuesday

 

 **11:20AM**  
Just curious if my sister is still alive  
on the other end, if you hear from her  
let her know her favorite sister wants to  
know how classes are going

 ** _12:07PM  
_**Miss you too, Hales

Classes are going okay!

 ** _12:11PM  
_**Not overdoing it, are you sis?

I know how you get

 _ **12:13PM**_  
I’m taking it as easy as one can  
when they’re majoring in three of the  
most demanding areas

I promise, I’m fine.

 ** _12:18PM  
_**If you say so

Let me know when you get a free  
moment soon – Tay and I want to  
FaceTime, see your room, all of that!

 ** _12:20PM  
_**Sure thing 💓

* * *

“You know, I’m not one to gamble, but I’d bet that you’ve got half of the rainforest sitting on the bar.”

Jackie looked up from her array of pamphlets and brochures to give Isabelle her infamous deadpan glare. “What?” Isabelle retorted, pausing her lettuce slicing – it turned out Isabelle was outrageously healthy, so much so that she’d all but dragged Jackie with her to the farmer’s market to have an extra set of arms. “I wasn’t the one who made it my mission to pop in and hear the spiel from every one of the thousand-plus organizations that USC has.”

“I still don't know why you didn't go,” Jackie mused, in reference to the involvement fair that had been held out in Campus Center that morning around lunch time. She’d had a small window of time between classes that she was able to go and check things out, and wasting even a sliver of a second was not an option. This was her first opportunity to sit down and browse through all of the things she’d accumulated while whirling through the tables before she absolutely had to leave in order to be on time (an hour early to) statistics. 

“My psych class ranked higher in priority than hearing about a bunch of clubs I probably wouldn’t wind up joining anyways.” 

“Extracurriculars are like ornaments on a Christmas tree,” Jackie stated matter-of-factly as she returned to thumbing through the mountain of papers, sorting them into stacks. There was the definite interest stack, the needs-more-research before making any decisions stack, and the ‘I only went to this table because they lured me at the promise of a free something and I will probably never give them any chance beyond that’ stack. So far, the latter of the three had the highest pile. “Without them, you’ve just got a sad, bare resume.”

“Okay, but there are only twenty-four hours in a day, Jackie,” Isabelle reminded her gently. “And most of those clubs meet at overlapping hours. Regrettably, there isn’t a real Time Turner in existence.”

“Believe me, if there was, I’d fight tooth and nail for it.” She then held up a brochure, eyebrows knitting together. “Model UN – do we like or not?”

“Jackie.”

“You’re right – big no. Last thing I need is for my dad to think I’m following in his footsteps.”

“ _Jackie_.” Isabelle put her knife down on her chopping board, hands settling on the counter as she waited for Jackie to make eye contact. “There’s no law saying you’ve got to join a club this semester. You could just use this semester to get adjusted before you dive headfirst into the wonderful world of organizations.”

On a lot of levels, Jackie and Isabelle were quite similar, a realization Jackie had come to after a few weeks of sharing a sink with her. Isabelle and Jackie were both go-getters, leaning towards the introverted side of the spectrum, an unsuspecting fire lurking under their exteriors that could flare up above the surface when the wind blew a certain way, and a little (a lot) nerdy. But for every similarity in their personality, there were at least two differences. Isabelle had been so involved in sports during high school that _that_ was her idea of an extracurricular, and once she’d hung up her cleats – or whatever it was that she did, Jackie had never really asked and it had never come up in conversation either – she officially went into extracurricular retirement. She’d done her share, and apparently, she wanted to live life like the average student.

Jackie couldn’t wrap her brain around that logic. Average was not a word that existed in her vocabulary that described her, unless there was a negating phrase in front of it.

“I could,” she agreed. “But you know how it goes: after you do things one way for so long, it’s hard figuring out and living by a new approach.”

Isabelle fell silent, her mouth flattened into a thin line. Jackie knew she couldn’t find a way around that one. “I know. I just…well, I’m your friend. Friends are allowed to worry about friends, especially when they think that their friends are putting too much on their already-full plate.”

Jackie sorted a flyer for the Adventure Gurus into her no pile before letting her hand fall still, offering Isabelle a smile. While she sometimes couldn’t figure out a person like Isabelle, somehow managing to stay afloat despite all of the holes and inconsistencies in her logic, she knew that a person like Isabelle was incredibly rare. And having someone like Isabelle – having _Isabelle_ – in her corner as more than just an ally, but as a friend was a blessing she didn’t need to overlook just so she could continue being stubborn and right about everything.

Pride was the ultimate frenemy for Jackie. While she didn’t want to stray completely from what she knew best, this was New Jackie’s chance to shine, and New Jackie wanted to finally have a black and white relationship with pride. She didn’t want to be its friend. She wanted to stay far, far away from it, because she knew the damage it could inflict when she let it run free.

So Jackie swallowed whatever she could have possibly retorted with and drew her hands back into her lap. “Thank you,” she said softly, waving her white flag.

Isabelle smiled brightly at her as she picked the knife back up. “What else are friends for?”

“Helping you with the meal prep, maybe?”

“It’s like you can read my mind.” Isabelle slid over closer to where the counters met at a right angle to make room for Jackie. “Wash your hands and pick up a knife.”

“Aye, aye, captain.”

Jackie left her piles of paper untouched there on the bar, knowing that she’d return to them soon enough. Perhaps when Isabelle went to bed. 

* * *

There was a fine line between a disaster and an emergency. Disaster was a scale of magnitude; a disaster could be something as insignificant as the Internet going out during a Netflix binge, or of the much more pressing, usually natural variety that turned buildings into two-dimensional figures against the canvas of the ground. Emergencies, on the other hand, were a little more cut and dry. An emergency was when someone’s life was on the line.

An emergency was what Jack and Josh would qualify their current predicament under.

“The girls,” was the first coherent thought that came to Jack through the haze of their panic. “Quick, go get the girls.”

Josh ran as fast as he could to 328, shutting the door behind him to keep from letting anything escape their room. He began knocking rapidly, praying to every deity he knew the names of that at the very least one of girls were in the room and awake.

“Do you think the people in China heard you?” Jackie uttered as she opened the door, Josh ignoring her entirely and barreling past her into the room. She was miffed by it, turning on her heel to follow him and doing very little to suppress the scoff that came from the back of her throat.

“Jackie, this is an emergency.”

“Emergency?” came Isabelle’s voice from the couch, where she was sprawled out doing her homework. “What’s going on?”

“Look, I need the two of you to do me the biggest favor in the entire world—”

Jackie’s hands rested on the tops of Josh’s shoulders, forcing them downwards in the hopes he would exhale. “Josh, slow down. Breathe.”

“We don’t have time for breathing! We need the two of you to distract Jena, like, _now_.” Jena was their RA; from what they’d all gathered at the frequent beginning-of-the-semester hall meetings, believing that she was the demure, sweet person she presented as essentially meant buying into a downright lie. She’d already busted the girls in 320 for having a hotplate, and they were barely three weeks deep in the semester. Jena didn’t play around when it came to upholding the rules and doing what she got paid to do.

“Why do we need to distract Jena?” Isabelle’s arms folded over her chest as she strolled over to where Jackie and Josh were standing.

Jackie, however, was already way ahead of her. “God, what did you two knuckleheads do now?”

“Jack tried to make top ramen in the microwave and it went terribly, terribly wrong. He’s trying to contain the smoke situation so the sprinklers aren’t triggered, but Jena is a loose end. Tie it for me. Please.”

Josh and Jackie were locked in an intense stare-down, the moment dragging on as they each tried to gain the upper hand. Isabelle kept going back and forth between the two of them, Jackie finally breaking in a sigh. “Alright. We’ll tie it. You owe us, though,” she warned.

“I expected nothing else.”

And with that, Josh was back in the doorway, ushering the girls out.

Jena’s room was in the middle of the hall, a power move from the powers that be. No one was far enough out of range from her iron rule, which was dangerous enough – add in the fact she was only a couple of doors down from Jack and Josh, and they were toast should they screw up. Like now, for example.

Josh walked with purpose, fire blazing behind him as he marched towards Jena’s room. Behind him, he could hear Jackie and Isabelle avidly whispering to one another as they tried to figure out their game plan. Admittedly, he had set them on the warpath without much strategy, but their time was limited. For all he knew, Jack was thirty seconds away from setting off the sprinklers and causing the next great flood on the third floor.

Once the door was in reach he started knocking, not bothering to see where Isabelle and Jackie were at with concocting a distraction. On the second knock, the door gave way underneath his fist and Jena’s head poked out of the crack in the door.

“Josh?” Her eyebrows knitted together, that whimsical sounding voice of hers that seemed as though it belonged to a fairy laced in confusion. She opened the door wider, much to Josh’s chagrin; the wider the door, the more likely she was to catch the smell of smoke. “Everything okay?”

“I, uh…we’re having a problem,” he stammered out uncertainly.

“We?” The door opened all the way, and Josh noticed her eyes move past him to look at Jackie and Isabelle.

“Yeah,” Jackie chimed in, her voice uncharacteristically soft. “Is it okay if you come with us back to our room? I don’t think the hall is the best place for this conversation…”

To Josh’s bewilderment, Jena’s face fell. “Yeah, absolutely.” Walking out of her room, she grabbed the marker off her door’s whiteboard and drew a red circle around the ‘OUT OF THE OFFICE’ sticker she had tacked in the corner. “C’mon.”

It was then that Josh turned around and got a glimpse at the girls, cluing in on what was unfolding. Jackie was holding a hunched over Isabelle against her chest, stroking her hair as Isabelle hiccupped. Whatever had happened behind his back had occurred at the drop of a hat.

Jena led the way back down to 328, Josh holding his breath the entire way and praying she wouldn’t smell something burning, the same scent he was sure he could taste out there in the halls. The sprinklers weren’t raining down on them so he had to assume Jack was containing the situation.

He was the last one back over the threshold, quick to close the door behind him. “She just found out that her boyfriend back home was cheating on her,” Jackie explained, right on cue with the stifled sob forcing its way out from Isabelle’s chest.

There weren’t any words Josh had in his vocabulary to describe it. If anything, it was like a car crash the way it captivated him and refused to let his sights go, turning him into a wordless, gawking creature over the quick one-eighty. Isabelle was booking it to her bedroom, Jackie and Jena hot on her heels. He followed along mindlessly, stopping at the threshold and leaning up against the doorframe to watch it all go down.

“He what?” Jena hissed.

“He cheated,” Isabelle enunciated as she flopped stomach-down onto her bed, Josh catching sight of her face. In no time at all, she had gone from composed to red and puffy with tear-tracks glistening down her cheeks. “With my best fuckin’ friend.”

Jackie jumped onto Isabelle’s bed and Jena grabbed one of their desk chairs, rolling it over to the side of the bed. Josh watched Jena frown as she reached for Isabelle’s limp hand. “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.”

“No, I’m the one who’s sorry. Sorry I ever _trusted_ them.” Isabelle then let her head fall, the comforter muffling her sobs.

Jackie’s hand was moving in circles as she rubbed Isabelle’s back to comfort her, eyes shifting back to Jena. “Apparently, somebody had caught them at a party a few weeks ago and told her about it, but they denied the whole thing.”

“Who busted them?”

Jackie shrugged. “Snapchat.”

Jena gave a slow nod. “Isabelle, I know this probably doesn’t mean shit to you right now, but you’re at an advantage.”

“An advantage?” Isabelle repeated, lifting her head back up. If looks could be weaponized, Jena would have turned to stone on the spot. “How is it an advantage when the girl I’ve been best friends with since the third grade and my boyfriend cared so little about me and my feelings that they decided the minute I changed my zip code to jump each other’s bones?”

Jena squeezed Isabelle’s hand, desperate to rein the conversation back within the limits of her control. “Because, as my dad would say, the trash always takes itself out eventually. Sounds to me like they didn’t deserve you in the first place.”

Isabelle’s features softened, her mouth falling from the hard line into a frown. “Yeah, I guess,” she mumbled as her eyes averted back down to the comforter.

There was a beat of silence, Isabelle letting a few more tears slip silently from her eyes while Jackie continued rubbing her back and the cogs in Jena’s brain whirring away trying to find a solution of sorts. It was heavy and awkward for Josh, who was simply standing in the doorway like a knot on a log and unsure of what to do in that situation. Good thing the girls hadn’t conferred with him on what they were planning to do – he was sure this was much more natural of a response than anything else he could have done.

Jena was the first one to break the silence. “Come on,” she said definitively. Isabelle’s eyes were on her in a second, puzzled by the request. “Time to take advantage of the best cure for anything that’s troubling your mind here on campus: Baked Bear.”

For a moment, Isabelle was still as the hesitation froze her in place. Jackie gave her a nudge to the abdomen with her kneecap. “C’mon, Bells. We need to get your mind off of things.”

“Ice cream sandwiches fix everything,” Jena sang auspiciously.

Finally, Isabelle sighed. “Fine,” she muttered as she pulled herself up on her elbows. “Baked Bear it is.”

Jena and Jackie ushered Isabelle off of her bed, Isabelle and Jackie sliding their shoes back on. Jena’s hands were settled on her hips as she glanced around the room, eyes landing back on Josh who she had seemingly forgotten was still present. “You wanna come, Hutcherson? I’m paying.”

From over Jena’s shoulder, Jackie’s eyes widened in a pointed glare that spelled out his answer for him.

“Oh, nah,” he deflected as best he could manage, waving it off dismissively with the flick of his hand. “No, I’ll leave the heartbreak remedies for you girls.”

“If you’re sure.”

Josh nodded. “I am.”  

“Alright then,” Jena concluded. “Off we go, ladies.”

Josh trailed along behind them like a lost puppy, Jackie reaching around him to close their door once they were all out in the hall. “We’ll see you later,” Jackie told him.

“Sorry you had to walk in during that breakdown,” Isabelle sniffled apologetically. All Josh could do was nod in response; words had left him entirely, still left dumbstruck by the performance the two of them had effortlessly pulled off. He actually believed that what he’d seen was entirely real, the whiplash so strong that he barely remembered that they’d done this just to get Jena far, far away from his and Jack’s room that now smelled like a campground.

The girls waved as they departed for the stairs at the end of the hallway, Jackie’s leading the pack directing them that way. He watched wordlessly as they walked off.

Not only had they distracted Jena, they had worked some sort of black magic reverse psychology shit on her and convinced her to take them all the way down to Baked Bear, one of the most populated places in the Village during this time of day. That would buy him and Jack enough time to air out their room and drown the smell of burnt top ramen in cologne.

He retreated back to his room the minute they were out of sight and in the stairwell. Jack was sitting on the counter when he walked back in, waving their emergency procedures pack that usually lived on the back of the door to keep the sprinklers from going off and to circulate the air out of the now-opened windows. The fans that they kept in the bedroom had also migrated into the living room, cranked on high.

“Well?” he asked. “We in the clear?”

Josh collapsed into one of the chairs that belonged at their dining table. “ _Dude_.”

“What? Did she not buy it? Is the fire marshal coming to revoke us of our microwave privileges?”

“I bought it and I was the one who told them I needed them to come up with a distraction.”

“Well, you can be a little gullible sometimes,” Jack noted.

Josh shook his head. “Dude, I have never seen anything like that in my life. They turned into different _people;_ I had no clue what the hell was going on, Isabelle was sobbing, Jackie came up with this story off the top of her head. They sold it so well that Jena’s now taking them to Baked Bear.”

“Damn,” Jack whistled. “I’m pretty sure Jena wouldn’t offer to take me to Baked Bear if I broke my neck and she was the one who did it.” Josh’s shoulders raised up to his ears in an exaggerated shrug, his hands thrown in the air. “Sounds like I missed quite the performance.”

“Oscar-worthy, dude. They deserve Oscars for that shit.”

* * *

 **FROM:** MADELINE FUHRMAN (themadfuhrman@gmail.com)

 **TO:** FUHRMAN, ISABELLE GRETCHEN (fuhrmani2@mailbox.usc.com)

 **SUBJECT:** Missed

Dear Isabelle,

The subject line is exactly what you are. Missed. I talked to Elina a few days ago, and all she could tell me about was you and this great move of yours across the country to go to college. I’m happy that you stuck with USC – there were plenty of schools in Georgia that would have loved to have you, I’m sure, but there’s nothing like spreading your wings and soaring off into the great unknown. Just look at me: three years abroad in Paris and I couldn’t be happier. I hope that USC is your Paris.

Elina didn’t know many of the answers to my questions, so I suppose that’s why I’m writing this (that’s also where I got this email address – she claims it’s the easiest way to reach you and none of my messages to your other account ever go answered). I’d love to hear about things on your end. What’s USC like? How have your first few weeks of college been? What classes are you taking, how are you finding them thus far? Do you like your roommate? Elina told me that you had let a randomizer pick your roommate; again, I’m pleasantly surprised by you and your decisions over these last few months. I knew you had a little of me somewhere in you.

As for me, Paris has been as beautiful as ever. Every day I grow as a songwriter, a creator, an artist, a daughter, a sister, a friend, and a human being. I feel myself flourish more and more with each rise and fall of the sun in the sky. Work never feels like work, only play. It truly is the city of romance, and my romance with life has never been stronger.

Please write back whenever you have a free moment in your day. I understand things have been hectic, to say the least, ever since I saw you last, but I am your sister. I’m doing my best, even if I’m an ocean away. I still care about you and I want to feel as though I’m a part of your life, not just suffice off of knowing that blood will always connect us.

I hope all is well on your end, and I look forward to hearing back from you!

À plus,  
Your sister Madeline

* * *

Where Isabelle was concerned, there were few people on the planet that were more infuriating than Madeline Fuhrman.

Older by four years – four years were apparently equivalent to millennia when she thought about how much ‘life experience’ her sister liked to brag about having on her – Madeline was the type of person specifically designed to crawl up under your skin and become the proverbial itch that could never be scratched. She drove Isabelle up a wall in the moments where Isabelle actually allowed herself to spare a thought towards her sister.

It hadn’t always been like that. With their mom working around the clock for CNN, the only company they had when they were kids was one another. As a result of that, Isabelle and Madeline had been attached at the hip. Wherever one was, the other was sure to be a few paces behind. Isabelle was like Madeline’s shadow, constantly tailing her around and wanting to do everything with her. Ever the craver of attention, Madeline lapped it up. She was more than happy to have an admirer in the form of her baby sister. Isabelle loved her so much that anything Madeline asked of her or suggested, Isabelle was game. She thought her older sister could do no wrong, and Madeline was in no hurry to discourage any of it.

But time went on, people grew up and got older and changed. Isabelle didn’t realize that it was much harder to escape someone’s shadow than it was to fall in line with it until much too late. Madeline was unrelenting in trying to create her sister in her own image. There was a glaring issue with the relationship between the two sisters that only became more obvious the older they got and the more different they became: so much of that adoration had soured and turned into resent, especially in Isabelle’s case. The endless comparisons, the snide comments and judgments, the held tongues at family events and outside forces contributing to the bad blood and the frosty air that only got colder became more and more reason to turn their sisterhood into a battlefield. Madeline was passive aggressive, whereas Isabelle was simply aggressive. Sometimes petty arguments or ignoring the other’s existence weren’t enough. It wasn’t uncommon for the two to retreat back to their bedrooms with split lips and scratch marks.

After graduating high school, Madeline had delivered the shocking revelation that she would not be going to college. Instead, she decided to road trip around the country for a year before deciding to head abroad to France. Isabelle's freshman year of high school had been a tumultuous one when it came to Madeline and her upturning the family, and the last time she’d talked to her sister on her own volition was at Christmas that year. She spent the rest of her high school years doing her best to escape the reputation of being Madeline Fuhrman’s sister and pretending that she didn’t exist. After all that had been said and done, Madeline didn’t exist to her.

Ever since she’d been in Paris, Madeline had been doing her damnedest to reach out to Isabelle. Emails, phone calls, letters, all of which went unanswered and deleted. Isabelle wasn’t in the mood for making up or making nice. If there had been any lesson she’d left high school knowing like the back of her hand, it was that you had to be ruthless for your own wellbeing.

For Isabelle, that meant cutting off her narcissistic, passive-aggressive, not-that-great-anyways sister that she always came in second to. Even if she was sure it broke her mother’s heart.

Needless to say, receiving an email from her was not the best way to kick off the weekend. In fact, it had her sitting in the library on Friday morning, simmering as she worked on her homework.

Normally she would take all of her anger out onto the pavement as she ran. Being fresh out of recovery and the fear of landing back on an operating table still looming over her threw out that option pretty quickly. She decided if she couldn’t run, she’d just type very, very angrily.

It didn’t go unnoticed, Alexander Ludwig pointing it out after about twenty minutes of her laying into the keys so hard it wouldn’t have come as a surprise if one of them popped off the keyboard. “Okay,” he finally said after he’d had enough, tapping her on the arm. “What did QWERTY ever do to you?”

“Huh?”

Alexander motioned towards the bottom half of her computer. “You’ve been typing so aggressively that I’m sure all of Leavey can hear your discussion post.”

“It’s not that loud.”

“Isabelle, I can hear it over the sound of my 808s.” 

She hadn’t asked Alexander to meet her in the library. That would have required her having his phone number, and she had only just figured out his last name when another happy accident led to him bumping into her yet again and she caught sight of an assignment he was working on inside of his notebook. She didn’t peg him for the type to constantly frequent a library, nor did she know him any better than she had the last time he’d approached and asked to sit at her table, but he was okay. He knew Leven, and Isabelle really liked Leven, so she figured anybody that she kept as company was an alright person. He was also pretty content to sit and work next to her without taking her away from what she was doing with a small-talk conversation or distraction. She never asked what it was that he was consumed in, but judging by the sporadic bursts of instrument sounds she could occasionally hear coming from his headphones, it had to do with music.

He had shown up nearly ten minutes after she’d sat down at the table, clearly beelining to that spot because it had been a good find the last time he had approached it. Isabelle knew it was a good spot, too; with hardly any people in that back section that was secluded from the rest of the library, a Wi-Fi connection that didn’t lag, and pretty decent circulation from the air conditioners, it was a perfect place to get work done. He’d looked at her with those blue eyes of his that just barely escaped from belonging to a ghost she’d known well and a warm smile when he asked to join her yet again, and who was she to say no?

Isabelle shoulders dropped as she fell back in her seat unceremoniously. “Sorry,” she sighed.

“Don’t apologize to me – apologize to the poor people who showed up without earbuds.” Her eyes narrowed, and he was quick to lift his hands from his own keyboard in a gesture of innocence. “What’s going on?” he asked, leaning around his laptop to plant his elbow on the table and rest his chin on his now-propped up fist.

Isabelle contemplated actually telling him the whole truth for a moment. The idea faded nearly as fast as it had come to her; just because he seemed to be a good listener didn’t mean he wouldn’t insert his two cents if he saw it fit, and Isabelle was awfully tired of people telling her what she ought to do or think about her sister.

“Just family drama,” she settled on, flashing him a pained smile.

“Ah.” He gave a slow nod. “Yeah, I know how that can be.”

Both of her eyebrows shot up. “You do?” she asked incredulously.

“I have three younger siblings. There’s always some great injustice occurring within the four walls of the Ludwig household.”

Isabelle was very, very thankful that it was just her and Madeline. If she had to put up with _three_ of her sister, Isabelle would have to check out and go live with her even more estranged father in the middle of nowhere, Northwestern America. “Yeah,” Alexander continued – it must have been the look on her face that prompted him. She knew there were some instances where her emotions got the better of her and she couldn’t resist wearing them on her face. “My sisters are still at the age where they’ve yet to shed the melodramatics, and my brother is just as bad, if not worse than they are. Blowing things out of proportion is like their talent.”

“And I’m sure you _never_ were like that,” Isabelle pointed out dryly.

“Of course not. Sometimes I think they brought home the wrong kid from the hospital and one day, my real, perfectly sane family will show up on our doorstep begging to take me back.”

That cracked Isabelle’s veneer, a small laugh escaping her throat. “Seriously, though, I understand how annoying family drama can be. Especially when you’re thousands and thousands of miles away doing your best to ignore it all and they keep finding ways to pull you back into it.”

She was quiet, trying to think of what to respond with. Maybe letting the whole situation out of her system wouldn’t have turned into a ‘give your sister a chance, she’s family’ rebuttal, but she still didn’t feel like reliving the entire Madeline saga for and inevitably chasing off the poor guy that she had only just learned the last name of.

So instead, she decided on addressing it the same way she always addressed Madeline pop-ups: she said nothing.

He took that as the end of it, offering her one last smile of reassurance before they both turned back to their work.

He had gotten one earbud back in, about to put in the other when Isabelle glanced up from the email that was still open and had been haunting her since four in the morning and back across the table. “Hey, Alexander?” she piped up nervously before he was back closed off in his own world.

His line of sight was like a rubber band, snapping back onto her at the sound of his name. “Thank you,” she said softly, her lips perking up in a tiny smile of gratitude.

One of his shoulders raised in a meek shrug. “Any time.”

She watched as he put his other earbud in, officially tuning out the rest of his surroundings and returning to whatever it was he was working on. She did the same, her sights shifting back down towards her email account. Madeline’s words danced across the screen, jovial as they mocked her.

 _She’s on another continent,_ Isabelle reminded herself. _She can’t get to me, and fuck her for thinking she gets to crawl into my brain now that I’m somewhere new. Scenery might change, but feelings don’t._

Her mouse didn’t hover over the trash icon for very long before she hit it defiantly.

**_Message deleted._ **

Good.

Madeline would have to try harder than that to sweep her back out in her current.


	5. go ahead as you waste your days with thinking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> regular? updates? who am i, honestly? i'm me, but when i don't have more pressing responsibilities like school. like i said last chapter, i'm very much determined to update as regularly as possible over the next few weeks while i'm on break because as user pneumatics so eloquently pointed out, these are long ass chapters and none of them show signs of growing any shorter. this story is like my therapy, alright??? i'll stop writing it when i run out of story to tell, and at the moment, i have pages of ideas. so, you guys are stuck with me for the long haul (which i am very very appreciative of, thank you for all of your sweet comments THEY KEEP ME GOING).
> 
> chapter title is from the all-american rejects' 'move along.' i feel as though i am always on instagram @tributediaries so please, come hang out with me on there. happy reading. xx

A theory existed somewhere that you could either be a good actor or a good liar, you could not have it both ways. Actors couldn’t lie very well because they always sought the truth in what they did. When there’s no truth to find, it’s hard to keep someone else convinced. Liars didn’t make good actors because the only emotions they knew how to manipulate were those of others, never their own.

Isabelle knew Jackie was pretty decent when it came to theatre (it had almost been her major, after all). So, if the theory was accurate in any way, then by default Jackie would be a horrible liar.

In this case, the theory was dead-on.

Jackie was very easy to read. Everything she felt she wore on her face, and she had trouble concealing it like Isabelle normally could. Jackie’s heart was right on the edge of her sleeve and everybody who knew her could tell. That sort of transparency meant there was no possible hope of her getting anything other than the truth by others.

Classes had been underway for a few weeks now, Isabelle unsure of where the time went. One minute they’d been reviewing syllabi and playing ice breaker games to “get to know” people that she was sure she’d never see again, and the next they were preparing for the first tests. College was proving to be more rigorous than the high school classes she’d breezed through without batting an eye. She’d made it her own goal to try and stay a few steps ahead of her coursework – of course, you always shoot for the moon to land among the stars, and Isabelle was lucky if she could finish the entire week’s work by Thursday. However, her stress levels were nowhere near the same caliber of Jackie’s.

For starters, Jackie had already taken on much more than Isabelle. In addition to her very laborious major, she’d started looking into an equally laborious minor in musical theatre (in Jackie’s world, if she couldn’t have it all then she wasn’t trying hard enough) that outlined her spring semester as nineteen and twenty-one hour course loads. Isabelle might not have been in an easy major but things were definitely moving at a more relaxed pace than Jackie’s philosophy, politics and law. It seemed like Jackie was always doing homework, surrounded by textbooks and her hair falling out of the staple sloppy top-knot as she dove so deep into what she was learning that coaxing her out took a great deal of effort.

Jackie was also in and out of the room going to meetings for the organizations she’d been interested in initially to see if she wanted to make any commitments. And whenever she had a window of free time – a very small window that kept shrinking by the day – she was rereading the entire Harry Potter series.  Apparently, they brought about a sense of comfort and peace that helped her maintain her sanity.

Isabelle didn’t know how well that was working out for her – Jackie came crawling into the bedroom most nights at three and four in the morning after finishing her homework or reaching an acceptable stopping place in _Goblet of Fire_.

Isabelle tried to remind herself (mostly as reassurance) that Jackie was a different breed. She’d never been one to fling herself into academia. Her intelligence level meant she could sail through school with minimal effort and channel it into something she was genuinely passionate about, like sports. Jackie, on the other hand, had apparently gone to some super distinguished private school per her politician parents’ request and didn’t have much to focus on outside of being valedictorian. Isabelle often got the inclination that Jackie felt as though she had something to prove. She knew this because it took one to know another.

Because of that, Isabelle also got the feeling that Jackie was continuing to push herself closer and closer to the edge. She didn’t know what the drop off the cliff looked like, necessarily, but she knew they were getting close.

The signs were there. She was closing in on herself, it seemed, the way she isolated herself and hardly wanted any company that took the form of another human being. Isabelle never saw her consume anything other than coffee. Fading away was the sharp, yet overall enjoyable Jackie; her attitude was beginning to sour, the fluent sarcasm toeing the line of genuine insults. Isabelle chalked it up to all of that pressure sitting right on the trigger, making it easy for her to use her mouth like a gun without giving it a spare thought.

Isabelle noticed Jackie particularly liked holding target practice whenever Jack was around. The back-and-forth banter between the two had yet to subside, but where Jack was all play, Jackie was busy blurring the boundaries the more irritated she grew.

They were in one of the common areas at the end of their hall, holding another study session with the boys that was beginning to take on the form of a weekly tradition. Josh picked up Rance’s on his way back from class as study fuel, arriving after Isabelle and Jackie had snagged a table with Jack joining them shortly after. Isabelle, Jack, and Josh dug straight into their food, Jackie claiming her pizza was her reward for finishing up her assignment. Isabelle frowned disapprovingly, but she knew better than to argue with Jackie after her mind had been made up.

Living with Jackie meant she was familiar with most of her idiosyncrasies, especially those pertaining to acceptable environmental conditions. By no means was this study session something Jackie would consider a work environment, further proved by all of the frosty glares she shot their way every time the conversation got loud. It was casual, all of them doing their work in each other’s company with the occasional (regular) detour where someone felt the need to vent out loud or share some video they found on their Twitter feed.

Not even an hour had passed before something in Jackie snapped, her shutting her notebook with a resounding thud. The other three tore their sights away from Josh’s computer screen where they’d been trying to help him write a discussion post, Isabelle’s eyebrows furrowing in discontent. “Jackie,” she sighed. It went ignored.

“Oh, c’mon, shortcake,” Jack groaned as they watched her stack her laptop onto the tall pile of books sitting off on the corner of the table. “Are we really that bad?”

“Yeah, you kinda are,” Jackie snapped, glancing up from her belongings. “Some of us have shit to do that’s not getting done because of the distraction across the table that keeps running his mouth.”

Jack fell silent, burying his mouth in his hand to hide the smirk that Isabelle caught growing. Unlike this new Jackie, he knew when he’d gone too far and bit back anything truly scathing.

“I’ll be in the room,” Jackie directed towards Isabelle, her voice falling much quieter. And with that, she stormed off back to 328.

Jack shallowly exhaled the minute she was out of sight, slouching back in his seat. Isabelle took notice of the abandoned Rance’s box near Jackie’s now abandoned seat, using her pen to coax the lid open. Just as she’d suspected: completely untouched and growing cold. She let the lid fall back down as her shoulders dropped in defeat.

“Your roommate sure is a shit ton of fun these days,” Jack muttered as Isabelle grabbed the box and put it inside her bag of leftovers.

“She’s stressed.” Her attempt at justifying Jackie’s shitty behavior was half-assed, and they all knew it.

“She’s fuckin’ rude,” Jack corrected matter-of-factly. “And you shouldn’t be making excuses for it, either. She knows exactly what she’s saying.”

“How far are we into the semester?” Isabelle asked feebly, both hands lifting to massage her temples.

“Not far enough for her to be acting like that, that’s for sure.”

They disbanded after another hour and a half, Isabelle balancing her leftover bag between her teeth while she unlocked the door. It came as no surprise to see Jackie sitting at their dining table, books spread out across the table’s surface and her laptop’s light glowing on her face. She peered up over the edge of her screen, a tiny smile surfacing. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Isabelle replied, her voice trailing off mostly due to the confusion by Jackie’s shift in demeanor. She shuffled into the kitchen, opening up the refrigerator door. “You left your pizza earlier.” Her eyes met Jackie’s, one of her eyebrows lifting in question. “Want me to heat it up for you?”

“Nah, that’s okay. I had something a little while ago.” Isabelle didn’t buy that in the slightest, but she wasn’t going to push.

Shutting the refrigerator door after putting the bag on one of the shelves, Isabelle sauntered out of the kitchen and started to make her way into the bedroom. “Wait.” She stopped in her tracks at the sound of Jackie’s voice, spinning back on her heel slowly to face her. “I’m sorry about earlier.”

“I’m not really the one who needs the apology,” Isabelle pointed out cautiously.

Jackie winced, nodding slowly. “I’ll text Jack in a few. Can’t imagine he’s up for some more of my super fun company.”

Isabelle saw the tiny window of opportunity for what it was, retracing her steps back towards the table. “You know I’m here for you, right?” she said, hip bumping up against the chair adjacent to Jackie’s.

“’Course I do.” Jackie’s sights redirected back to the endless sea of work in front of her, a shallow sigh pushing from her nose. “I’m just really stressed right now with classes and everything. Don’t worry about me, though. Seriously. I’ll be back to normal in no time at all.”

Judging by Jackie’s track record with successful lies, Isabelle hoped that she was telling the truth when she said it. This couldn’t be the new normal. Isabelle and her friendship with Jackie wouldn’t make it to Christmas.  

* * *

  **IMESSAGE**  
Leven Rambin, Jennifer Lawrence  
Wednesday

 _Me_  
**_2:12PM_**  
Alright, it’s crisis o’clock

 _Jennifer Lawrence_  
**_2:17PM_**  
Crisis o’clock?

 _Me_  
_**2:20PM**_  
Yeah, otherwise known as time for  
an intervention

Jackie is 99% caffeine, 0.98% sass and  
0.02% herself these days and we can’t  
keep going like this. I want my roommate  
back

And I know for a fact she’s not going  
to listen to anything that comes out of  
Jack Quaid’s mouth so it’s up to us,  
ladies

 _Leven Rambin_  
_**2:23PM**_  
I’m so in, she hasn’t said two words to me  
since last week. “Space” my ass

Iz, do you think you could strong-arm  
her away from the books Friday night?  
I’ve got an idea

 _Me_  
_**2:25PM**_  
Unless she’s up at 3am bench-pressing  
her textbooks, I should have the upper hand

 _Jennifer Lawrence_  
_**2:27PM**_  
Better hope she doesn’t  
take to whacking you with  
OotP as defense

 _Me_  
_**2:32PM**_  
I’ve been getting more than 2 hours of  
sleep every night, I think my reflexes  
are better than hers atm

 _Jennifer Lawrence_  
**_2:35PM_**  
If Lev’s in, so am I

 

 _Leven Rambin_  
_**2:41PM**_  
Okay, Friday night. Seven o’clock.  
Be ready to drag Jackie out of the  
dorm, and we’ll handle the rest.

 _Me_  
**_2:46PM_**  
Roger that

 _Leven Rambin_  
**_2:47PM_**  
???

 

 _Jennifer Lawrence_  
**_2:55PM_**  
We’re on a mission, Lev

Get with it

* * *

“Get up.”

“What?”

“Get up and go put some clothes on.”

“I’m wearing clothes, Isabelle.”

“Okay, get up and go put some clothes on that _aren’t_ your pajamas.” Isabelle stopped with her hand hovering over the doorknob, glancing back at a frozen and bewildered Jackie that was knee-deep in her blankets. “I’m serious. Get up, run a brush through your hair, spray some perfume, whatever you gotta do.”

“Where are we even going?” Jackie whined in dismay.

“Get ready! We’re leaving in ten!” And with that, Isabelle sauntered out of the room and let the door click back in place in the frame behind her.

The sigh of relief forced its way from her diaphragm involuntarily. She didn’t realize she’d been as anxious to have that confrontation as her body apparently recognized her to be. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that the two of them were both innately stubborn and in need of some control over their immediate environments that Isabelle feared that, plus Jackie’s loose cannon nature as of lately, would result in a locking of the horns.

She felt her phone buzz in the back pocket of her shorts, leaning up against the wall that sectioned the kitchen off from the living area. It was from Jen, the only person Isabelle knew that still used traditional emoticons in the place of emojis. **_On our way, see u in a few Belly! :D_**

If Jen was texting, then it meant Leven was driving. Outside of them driving the getaway car, Isabelle was just as in the dark as Jackie on what they had up their sleeves. **_See you soon!_** , she typed back, locking her phone once the speech bubble appeared in their message thread.

She’d meant what she’d said. Friends didn’t watch friends drive themselves to total destruction all because of stress. Jackie didn’t know her very well at all if she truly thought Isabelle would just roll over and let everything fall away to background noise. Jackie was basically her best friend, which made it even more impossible for Isabelle to simply sit by and watch Jackie become a demolition site.    

Jackie finally emerged from the bedroom, tugging down a T-shirt that Isabelle hadn’t yet seen in the stress ‘I’m only wearing the same five outfits’ rotation Jackie had since adopted. Isabelle peeled herself off the wall, smiling brightly at her friend as she strolled over in her direction. Jackie was busy bracing the upper half of her body against the wall as she slid on her pair of Converse that permanently lived next to the door of their room.

“Aw, see, your hair looks so much better down,” Isabelle commented cheerfully. Jackie’s sights shot back up to give her a stern look.

“I don’t see why we’re getting out of the apartment,” she grumbled, shoving her foot down into her shoe. “It’s a Friday night.”

“Yeah, and most normal people get out of their apartments on Friday nights.”

“Normalcy is overrated.”

Isabelle’s phone vibrated in her hand, signaling another text from Jen waiting on her lockscreen. **_We’re out on the west entrance of Irani. Book it._**

“C’mon,” Isabelle said, grabbing Jackie’s wrist with one hand and the strap of her purse with the other.

As promised, Leven and Jen were out in front of the west entrance of Irani, rolling through the fire lane on their brakes. Isabelle spotted Jen at the same time Jen noticed her, Jen’s face visibly brightening when their eyes made contact and her arms beginning to wave frantically. Leven took the hint, glancing over out the window in their direction. Her eyes grew wide, motioning violently for the two of them.

“Get in, get in!” she urged through gritted teeth as Isabelle flung open the door to the Jeep, diving across the backseat to take her place behind Jen. “A cop passed us the second we swerved into the fire lane and he’ll be back from circling the block any second to haul my ass off to jail.”

Jen’s face flattened into a scowl. “Leven, they do not take you to prison for parking in a fire lane.”

“Well, I’m definitely not paying the hefty fine they give you!”

Jen glanced into the backseat, her cheek pressed against the headrest. “Be thankful for me; she wanted to just slow down instead of stop, make you guys dive roll into the backseat so we could speed back off like the Fast and the Furious. I told her there was no way in hell.”

“Really, Lev?” Isabelle chided. At the sound of Jackie closing the door, Leven stepped on the gas and pulled out of the fire lane, only meeting Isabelle’s eyes in the rearview mirror once they rolled up to a stop sign.

“What? You two said this was a mission. Nothing says mission quite like a little agility.”

“Okay,” Jackie finally spoke up. “Not that I don’t love being kidnapped by my friends, but what’s happening here?”

“Enjoy the ride, Emerson,” Jen sang brightly, scrolling through Leven’s phone to find a Drake song worthy enough to blast through the stereo speakers.

The bass line made the windows vibrate as they turned out onto the freeway, Isabelle catching Jackie glancing over at her for some sort of explanation. Isabelle merely shrugged, shaking out her hair and letting it fall free down her back.

She clued in once they headed down a familiar series of streets off their exit, the bright sign of the Original Coffee Pantry welcoming them as Leven drove straight into one of the front row parking spots.

“Breakfast?” Jackie asked skeptically.

“There’s nothing OGCP can’t fix,” Leven stated matter-of-factly, pushing the gear shift into park and ripping her keys from the ignition in a fluid motion.

Jen skipped ahead, leading the way into the restaurant. She kept going until she landed right in front of the same table that they’d occupied the last time they were here, sliding into the exact same side of the booth. Either they were creatures of habit (and this was actually a habit, not merely a convenient spot for them) or Jen just really liked sitting in the back.

“Alright, Jac,” Jen announced as the rest of the girls piled into the booth. “We hear you’ve been living on an all caffeine diet lately—"

“Have you now?” Jackie’s eyes cut over at Isabelle, leaving Isabelle to raise her hands in defense.

“Which is why your one and only rule is to order whatever you want off the menu, as long as it’s not a coffee. _Whatever_ you want,” Leven emphasized. “Our treat.”

“Personally, I don’t think you can go wrong with the French toast,” Jen added as she absentmindedly flicked the laminated corners of the menu in front of her.

A moment of silence fell over them, Isabelle stealing a glance up from her menu to survey Jackie. She could sense the rigidity radiating from her body, and it didn’t take any sort of genius to see the cogs whirring inside Jackie’s mind as she tried to make up her mind on the unfurling situation. She didn’t know if Jackie was the type to take to interventions kindly or if they’d need to revoke her silverware privileges before one of them wound up with a fork sticking out of their hand. After a few seconds, Jackie picked up the menu in front of her.

Whether it was resignation or postponing, Isabelle wasn’t going to question it. Neither was Leven, who caught Isabelle’s eye before she went back to browsing the menu and shot her a quick wink.

Jackie took Jen’s advice in ordering the French toast and a hot chocolate after a few pointed glares from Jen herself upon ordering a cup of decaf; Leven ordered the raspberry pancakes, Isabelle decided to give the Georgia peach pancakes a try after passing them the last time they’d come, and Jen rounded out their order with French toast and a double order of bacon.

After their waiter disappeared back into the kitchen, Jen leaned forward and propped her elbow up on the table, chin resting on top of her fist. “So, girlies,” she prompted. “How are classes? Aside from the obvious.” Her eyes locked on Jackie, much to Jackie’s annoyance. Jen wasn’t bothered by the glare sent hurtling her way, lips peeling up into a smile.

“Other than trying to getting fully acclimated, everything’s going okay on my end,” Isabelle summed up. “I go to bed most nights by ten, so I wouldn’t say I’m having any other issues.”

“Okay, I know you’re calling me out, and it’s not appreciated,” Jackie hummed as she started fiddling with the ends of a straw wrapper. “I’m juggling a lot.”

“On three hours of sleep.”

“Okay, yes, on three hours of sleep,” Jackie finally conceded. “But it’s nothing out of my ordinary. I used to pull all-nighters regularly in high school and I’m still breathing.”

Leven’s lips twitched into a sad smile. “Yeah, but this isn’t high school babe. College is a whole other ballfield. If you don’t remember to take care of yourself, you’re gonna burn out.”

Jen nodded in agreement. “One of our suitemates last year left in the middle of October because she had a manic breakdown. We literally came home one day and something in her had just snapped. She wound up taking spring semester off and I don’t think she came back this semester, either.” Both of her shoulders lifted in a half-hearted shrug.  “Your body is gonna force you to take care of yourself, whether you do it along the way or all at once. And we all know how much you like school.”

Jackie’s lips pressed into a thin line, left without anything to say. The girls took that as their prime opportunity to keep their sage advice spinning.

Leven reached across the table and placed her hand over Jackie’s wrist. “Jen and I have both danced this dance before. It’s okay if you don’t do everything you want to, because you can’t do it all. There aren’t enough hours in the day. Besides, there are like, forty thousand people at USC; unless you play football or are a celebrity, you’re just another fish in the sea, and success here is not being the best at everything.”

“Success here is surviving,” Jen chimed in. “And finding your people that make surviving much more enjoyable.” She paused for a second, gesturing around the table. “That’s us. We’re your people, and we like you enough that we want to have you here as yourself and not the stress monster.”

“Which is why you should _use_ us,” Leven encouraged. “We’re your friends. We’re here for you, however and whenever.”

If it wouldn’t be written off as somewhat weird, Isabelle would have given applause to that statement. Somehow, they managed to put it in better terms than she ever would’ve been able to.

Jackie was quiet for a moment, her eyes bouncing around the table at the other three. “None of you are ever going into a job where you’ll be holding professional interventions, right?”

“Nope.”

“No.”

“Not in this universe.”

Jackie gave a succinct nod. “’Kay, good.” Her lips then softened into a smile. “Then thank you for this.”

“What else are friends for?” Leven asked, her smile satisfactory.

Jackie’s hand slid across the table to where Isabelle’s was resting casually, squeezing the top of it. “And thank you for taking care of me even when I probably don’t deserve it.”

“What else are roommates for?”

A weight that Isabelle hadn’t been able to name or accurately place over the last few days started to dissipate, the clouds beginning to break up as the four of them started swapping stories about their week. Isabelle loved being in the company of Leven and Jen because they had something about them that made her feel safe. It wasn’t just because they were older and had a little more idea as to what they were doing around campus, but because of how wide open their arms were when it came to her and Jackie. It didn’t make much sense, really, two upperclassmen choosing to keep the company of two freshman (one of whom was close to having a breakdown) but she tried not to question it. She liked having them as friends. She liked their company. Leven was inclusive and warm, something Isabelle figured an older sister was _supposed_ to be like, and Jen made her laugh so hard that orange juice threatened to come out of her nose.

They were halfway through their meal, Jen neck-deep in recounting one of her off-the-wall middle school adventures and Isabelle pushing peach compote through a small column of whipped cream on her plate when something across the room stole Leven’s attention away.

“What the fuck!?”

That tore Jen straight out of her saga, her eyes darting up to see what Leven was gaping at. Isabelle and Jackie both swiveled around in the booth. Approaching them was none other than Alexander Ludwig, a small group of guys trickling in behind him that Isabelle realized after a few seconds she knew – better than knew, really, she lived down the hall from two of them.

“Language, ‘Bino,” Alexander sang as he strolled up to the edge of their booth. “Even though I know it’s just your way of saying you’re stoked to see me.”

“What, did you install a tracker in our car?” Jen retorted playfully, throwing her crumpled up straw wrapper at him.  

“That would imply that I know how technology works, and up until Leven, I spent my time on the guest wifi.”

“You are pathetic,” Leven drawled.

Alexander’s smile was nothing short of megawatt. “Thanks, baby. Appreciate it.”

“Who’s your little squad?” Jen asked as she waved her fork around, mouth half full of French toast.

“Well, I believe you know Dayo.” Isabelle figured that was the only one of the guys she didn’t recognize, the one walking in time with Josh as they discussed something animatedly. He was the football player that Alexander had mentioned at the tailgate – she could see it. Next to the other three, his build screamed athletic.

“I try not to, based on that outfit,” Leven commented, Dayo’s ears pricking up at the mention and the frown settling over his face almost immediately.

Alexander continued without making acknowledgement of Leven’s interjection. “And then there’s Jack and Josh, who I know through Dayo and these two live on the same floor as.” His line of sight drifted over to Isabelle, smiling once he saw her.

Judging by the look on Leven's face, she was in shock. "Wait, you guys have friends that  _aren't_ through us?"

"Excuse me, Levendrop, we're grown men. We're very capable of doing things for ourselves," Dayo pouted. Leven snorted in response, diving back into what was left of her pancakes.  

“Never mind that, you’re here because…?”

Both of Alexander’s eyebrows lifted at Jen's redirection. “We gonna have a turf war or something, Lawrence?”

Her face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Not if you get our bill.”

“Who’s the pathetic one now, ‘Bino?”

“Still you!”

Jack sliding into the booth directly behind Isabelle and Jackie startled Isabelle slightly, whipping back around to glare at him. “I see you finally got the dragon out of its cave.” He paused, glancing over Jackie’s shoulder. “And she’s eating real food. I don’t believe it.”

Both of Jackie’s lips pressed into a thin smile, flashing it Jack’s way before spinning back around and focusing on her French toast. “Well, seeing is believing, Quaid.”

“Isabelle.” Her attention left Jack and back to Alexander, who was still standing next to her side of the booth. His head tilted down, offering her a lopsided smile. “Mind if I squeeze in?”

“Hey, get your own table!” Jen whined. “We’re having girl time!”

“Girl time, huh?” Dayo chimed in as he took a page from Alexander’s book, forcing Leven to scoot over by placing himself right on the edge of their booth. “What are we talking about?”

Alexander was _still_ standing there, so Isabelle rammed her elbow into Jackie’s side as request for her to slide until she was sitting with one arm pressed up against the glass to make room for their new seat mate. Jackie did so rather begrudgingly. Alexander was careful not to squish them together in the same way Dayo was doing to Leven and Jen on the opposite side, especially since he barely knew Jackie and he and Isabelle were acquaintances at best. Instead, he sat with one leg fully under the table and the other sitting at an angle outside of the booth.

“ _We_ weren’t talking about anything,” Leven clarified as she made a sweeping gesture that encompassed all of them sans Jen. “Jen was just reliving her middle school memories.”

“Oh, Jenny, nobody cares about you guys playing hide and seek under the bleachers.”

“I wasn’t even telling that story.” Jen stabbed another chunk of French toast onto her fork, directing her glare around Leven so Dayo got the brunt of it. “And, for the record, going underneath the bleachers changes you.”

“Sounds like a really boring girl time if you ask me.”

Caught in between the conversations between Leven, Jen and Dayo _and_ Jackie and Jack, Isabelle took to shoveling another bite of peach compote into her mouth. “What’d you get?” Alexander asked her right as the fork left her mouth. She couldn’t decipher if this was simply him making an observation or if he too was feeling rather out of place in the multiple conversations swirling around them.

“The Georgia peach pancakes,” Isabelle replied, as if the answer were written on her forehead.

“Haven’t had those before.”

One of Isabelle’s shoulders raised in a small shrug. “Acquired taste, I guess. I’m from the South, so it reminds me of home.”

“Southern girl, huh?” Alexander was quiet for a moment, eyes surveying her. “Guess that explains the accent.”

“My accent is not that bad,” Isabelle drawled, stopping the second the words rolled off her tongue in the exact same Southern inflection she claimed she didn’t have. Alexander stared at her bemusedly, breaking out into a laugh the minute Isabelle’s eyes dropped back down to her plate in defeat, the heat rising in her cheeks.

“So, seriously, what dragged you girls out here for girl time?” Josh inquired from the chair he’d stolen from another table and brought to the head of theirs.

To the other girls’ surprise, Jackie was the one to respond. “Just needed a little perspective realignment.”

“English, please?” Jack requested, raising his hand.

Isabelle was happy to summarize for them. “Getting out of our heads.”

“Well, next time, can I be invited to girl’s night out?” Dayo muttered, reaching over and grabbing an abandoned raspberry off of Leven’s plate. “Fuck only knows that I need a minute away from all of my thoughts. It’s very, very loud in my brain, especially when most of my thoughts sound exactly like Coach’s whistle.”

Jack nodded. “Sophomore year is no joke.”

“Junior year is no joke,” Jen countered.

“Philosophy, politics, and law is no joke,” Jackie triumphed, taking a long sip of her hot chocolate.

“We get it, Jac, no one is as stressed as you,” Jack reassured her, reaching over the booth and patting her on the shoulder.

Jackie swatted his hand away, setting her mug back down on the table. “I’m just saying, I thought college was supposed to be at least a little bit fun. So far, nada.”

Alexander was oddly quiet as he toyed with his phone, spinning it around by the edges. Isabelle couldn’t tell what he was thinking, if he was even thinking at all. The only person around their table that Isabelle could read confidently was Jackie.

“It’s fun sometimes,” Leven offered up optimistically.

Josh scoffed. “Not nearly enough though.”

“Yeah, there was absolutely nothing fun about living in Trojan Hall.”

“You guys lived in _Trojan_?”

“Barely lived to tell the tale, too.”

“Got it!” The sound of Alexander clapping his hands together suddenly sounded vaguely like a gunshot, sending Isabelle nearly three feet out of the booth. Jen’s fork went clattering to the ground. Whatever idea had come to him arrived like a strike of lightning – without prologue and somewhat terrifyingly in nature.

The smile on his lips was wide enough to give the muscles in his face a job to do. “What if we made a bucket list?”

Everyone stared at him blankly. “Oh, come on,” he protested. “You guys are all sitting around here complaining about not having enough fun this year. This is a surefire way to make sure we all don’t drown in our homework and make real memories.”

“And how do you suggest we make this bucket list?” Leven argued. “Don’t know if you noticed, but we’re not all exactly ex-frat adrenaline junkies. We all probably have different ideas as to what fun is.”

She made a solid point.

Apparently, Alexander had been anticipating someone to challenge his logic. One of his fists unfurled, hand extended out to the side as if miming a shrug. “Okay, so…everybody gets to pitch a few ideas?” he suggested. “We can all meet up again sometime next week and we’ll compile them together, make a giant ass bucket list for the eight of us. Everyone gets at least one of their picks on the list, too. That way it’s fair to all you non-ex-frat adrenaline junkies.”

Things were quiet around the table as everyone mulled over the proposition. Isabelle personally didn’t see much harm in it. It sounded like the exact sort of thing she, Kalia and JP would have done on an off-night with nothing else to do, sans an actual execution of the bucket list. She wasn’t sure this would make it to that stage, either, which made it even more low-risk in her opinion. No harm, no foul.

Jen was the first one to speak up. “What the hell, right? Count me in.” Alexander grinned devilishly, leaning across the table to give her a high-five.

“If Jen’s in, so am I,” Leven chimed in.

Dayo nodded, swiping Leven’s coffee from her and taking a drink. “Me three.”

From behind them, Jack’s hand collided down on the top of where both back-to-back booths met. “I’m in.”

Josh shrugged. “Same here.”

It was down to Isabelle and Jackie, everyone’s eyes hovering on the two of them expectantly. They exchanged glances, Isabelle’s shoulder folding in a half-shrug. “I’m in if you are,” she said.

Isabelle watched Jackie’s eyes, the cogs whirring behind them at light speed as she calculated out her decision. It felt as though they were all waiting with bated breath for her answer, the seconds ticking by before Jackie finally sighed, her body slouching against the back of the booth.

“What the hell. Let’s do it.”


	6. there's a little part of me that's got the fear of missin' out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't have much of anything interesting to say this chapter except I LOVE CHRISTMAS TIME - it is the most wonderful time of the year because it is also my most productive time of the year, lmao. this is the chapter i've been itching to write since i came up with the idea for this fic, because the second half of the fic was what gave me the idea for it in the first place. it's also based off a real post/scenario shared by one of the actual cast members themselves (to quote my friend claire, i'm just writing fan-interpretive-non-fiction) so i want to make sure to give as much respect to it as possible while still keeping that em flair to it, not only because of its roots in reality for that person, but because of its roots in reality for me. it's a part of this fic because the message behind it and the person's reason for sharing their experience is important: not everything is for everybody. just keep that in mind as you go throughout life and you deal with people wanting to shove you into molds or meet expectations you don't agree with or fit who you are. this has been wisdom time with emily.
> 
> chapter title is from kacey musgraves' 'lonely weekend.' i post religiously to my instagram account @tributediaries so if you're on the 'gram, come pop in, say hi, cry over a few edits, slip into my dms/curiouscat messages, whatever you're feeling. happy reading. xx

**IMESSAGE**  
Lev RamBino  
Thursday

 _ **5:30PM**_  
Spread the word: OGCP, tmrw nite  
9 pm

 _ **5:32PM**_  
You couldn’t send this text  
out to everyone yourself???

 _ **5:35PM**_  
1) I don’t have the freshies #s bc  
2) I doubt u would give them to me  
and 3) u know everyone

No one rallies the troops quite like  
u, Lev

 ** _5:36PM  
_**Yeah yeah

You’re right about #2, though.  
No way in hell you’re getting their  
numbers from me

 _ **5:38PM**_  
I’ll be able to score red’s easy  
I think I’m her type

 

 ** _5:40PM  
_**Best joke I’ve heard all day

If you aren’t an extra-credit assignment,  
or a TA, you aren’t Jackie’s type

 ** _5:41PM  
_**I AM EVERYONE’S TYPE

* * *

 

Alexander was the first to OGCP, and uncharacteristically so. He was never the first to arrive anywhere. Lateness ran in his bloodstream, beginning back when he’d refused to make an appearance on his due date and chose to wait it out in the womb for eight more days.

But he figured when rivaled with the girls playing carpool (and Leven behind the wheel) and the other boys all trying to navigate their way to an otherwise foreign location, his own chronic tardiness didn’t hold a candle.

He’d set up camp at Jen’s lucky booth, idly stirring his straw around the glass while he waited for the rest of them to come filing in. Crumpled up in the pocket of his flannel were the piece of notebook paper he’d ripped out of the lone notebook he brought with him to class to jot down notes – or, in this case, bucket list ideas. He already had a few of his own scribbled at the top, brainstorming last-minute in that afternoon’s history of popular music class.

Not that he was biased or anything, but this had been a pretty damn good idea. In fact, it was probably the best idea he’d had since sophomore year’s epiphany of rigging a crude contraption to keep from charging his laundry card in Webb and save more money to contribute to the Phi Kappa Psi parties. That was, until he had the even _better_ idea to just ditch Phi Kappa Psi entirely.

Yes, the bucket list was his best idea since disaffiliation. Though they were far and few in between, his good ideas really sparkled.

The girls beat the boys by ten minutes. Isabelle and Jackie came into sight before Leven and Jen, the latter two likely falling behind due to Leven refusing to drive with shoes on. Involuntarily, it seemed, his mouth turned upwards in a smile the minute he made eye contact with them – Isabelle in particular. He’d bumped into her again at the library on Tuesday, the two of them spending a few hours at what had become their unspoken choice of table as they got some work done. It was nice, coexisting a few seats away from her. There was just something about her that he liked. He couldn’t put his finger on it, really, but he figured it was the same thing that had drawn him towards Leven and Jen a few years ago: she was a star in the midst of a city full of lightbulbs.

When he thought about it, he’d been to Leavey more this semester so far than he had over the course of his entire college career.

Jackie, he didn’t know as well, but he liked her all the same. Alexander liked complex, complicated women. That was what he’d grown up around – he, his dad and brother might have been in even numbers with his mom and two sisters but they were undoubtedly outmatched by them – and that was still the type of female company he liked to keep. Jackie Emerson certainly matched that description. She was feisty and apparently fragile when it came to the grading system, but she kept him on his toes.

“Zander!” Jen thundered delightedly as she came sauntering into the restaurant a beat behind the new girls, Leven stumbling along at a distance as she tried to adjust her boots to a degree of walkability. “Where’s your merry band of hoodlums?”

“Probably still on the I-5,” he commented, sliding all the way to the window to make room for Isabelle and Jackie.

Dayo, Jack and Josh didn’t turn up until after Alexander and the girls all put in their orders. The girls all got exactly what they’d had last week, Alexander sticking with a large black coffee and an extra fork to bum food off of the girls. It seemed logical enough in his brain: it saved them all money and the need for to-go boxes. Even if they didn’t agree, he _was_ helping.

Alexander Ludwig was synonymous with helpful, after all. Helpful and full of good ideas.

Dayo slid in next to Jen and Leven just as he had last time, with Jack and Josh pulling up chairs to the edge of the table and closing off the open end. The eight of them were all packed around the too-tiny booth as they swapped stories about the last week of their lives. Isabelle delightedly found out that Dayo made decent enough grades in her intro psych class, Jackie informed them that she had been getting an average of six hours of sleep, Josh and Jack went into some spiel about their hellacious RA, and Jen launched into another installment of her middle school saga. The word _friends_ popped into Alexander’s brain. It was what they felt like, anyways.

Leaning over and swiping an abandoned bite of Isabelle’s peach pancakes, Alexander decided to reroute their conversation away from tales of the past and onto the real reason they were there. “Alright, guys,” he prompted, setting his fork on the table right at the edge of Isabelle’s plate. His hand moved towards the front of his shirt, elbow jutting out and shoving Isabelle into Jackie’s shoulder. “Whoops, sorry, Bells.” It didn’t take him long to produce the crumpled of sheet of notebook paper that he’d forced into a pocket-sized shape, unfolding it and smoothing it out on the surface of the table.

“Bucket list ideas.” His blue eyes did a lap around the table. “Everybody bring some?”

There was a low chorus of agreement in response, Alexander grinning. “Excellent. Who’s got a pen?” His line of sight shifted over to Mary Poppins herself. “Lev?”

She rolled her eyes, hand jutting down into her purse and returning back above the table with a sketching pen. She started to extend it out to him, stopping short and yanking her hand back towards her chest. “You aren’t writing this,” she told him. “Your handwriting is illegible.”

Alexander frowned. “My handwriting is not _illegible_. It’s just…sloppy.”

“It’s like the fuckin’ hieroglyphics.” Leven shifted her body, extending out the pen to Isabelle. “Izzy, you do it.”

Isabelle apprehensively took the pen, turning towards Alexander and motioning for him to hand her the paper. They made a trade: Alexander gave her the piece of notebook paper and she slid her plate in front of him for him to pick off what was remaining.

He watched as her hand ran over the surface of the paper a few more times to iron out all the wrinkles as best she could before uncapping the pen. Jackie’s chin was resting on her shoulder in an instant to watch Isabelle carefully print out at the top, _BUCKETLIST 2018_. For a few embellishments, she began drawing circles on all the end points of each letter.

“What’s already written on there?” Jen asked, mouth half-full of bacon.

“Some of my ideas,” Alexander answered.

“Okay, wait,” Jackie intervened, lifting one of her hands to pause the conversation. “How are we gonna do this? Do we put every idea on trial? Everybody puts one on there and then we just brainstorm? What’s the plan here?” Alexander had also learned Jackie liked structure and planning things. A lot.

For a moment, everyone was quiet. It wound up being Josh, the surprising diplomat who spoke up first. “How about we all go around and say our ideas, Iz can write them down and then we go back around and decide which ones we keep and trash? If at least three people disagree with something, then it’s axed. Otherwise, it stays.”

“Sounds fair enough,” Jen chimed in.

Isabelle was already scribbling away, more than likely tacking on her own suggestions. Things fell back to silence as she wrote, Alexander joining Jackie in watching as she wrote. Surprising that he hadn’t noticed until now, but Isabelle’s handwriting made his look like a bunch of pencil scribbles. She wrote neatly, most of it at a slight slant due to her being left-handed. Her letters were small, carefully crafted unlike his own haphazard ones. She had barely finished writing her last suggestion before Jackie started to mutter all of her own ideas into Isabelle’s ear.  

Once Jackie’s were added to the now-growing list, Isabelle’s head cast up and looked for another volunteer to go next.

She did Leven and Jen next, prying answers out of the boys the same way one might pull teeth. No one argued any ideas thrown out despite their varying degrees of ridiculousness, everyone letting Isabelle write them all out onto an equal playing field. By the time she was done, the list almost reached the bottom of the sheet of paper.

“Okay,” Isabelle concluded, tapping the bottom of her pen on the paper. “Should we just go from top to bottom in weeding them out?”

Alexander watched Jackie nudge her shoulder. “Works fine for me.”

Isabelle then cleared her throat. “Alright. First one: have sex in public.”

“Really, Alexander?” Leven shot him a glare from across the table that, if tangible, would have bled him dry right through his favorite flannel shirt.

“What? It’s a bucket list. Things we wanna do before we die. And I wanna have sex in public before I die. Sue a guy.”

“Well, I think I can safely speak for all of us that you’re not checking that off with anybody sitting around this table.”

“Hard agree,” Jackie added. “Cross it off, Isabelle.”

She frowned, Alexander noticing the way that the freckles on the bridge of her nose scrunched up as result. “We need at least three people to veto it.”

Jackie’s hand did a quick sweep across Dayo, Jack and Josh. “There’s three right there.”

Isabelle looked for some sort of contest, and found none. “Sorry, Zander,” she hummed as she drew a neat line through the first option.

It had been a long-shot. Besides, he had to admit he was slightly relieved – he didn’t realize that these were all going to be things they did with one another.

Isabelle resumed her prattling off the list, leaving pause in between each option for someone to protest. There were a few that made the list that one or two people had already accomplished, everyone turning to Josh to settle how the loophole would be addressed, but for the most part there was mostly agreement among the ones to keep and the ones to trash. In addition to Alexander’s big-bang at the front of the list, the ones that got trashed were all ideas that were either illegal, immoral, or a little too ambitious for them to accomplish while still full-time students.

Overall, the process went over smoothly and painlessly, Isabelle finally capping the pen and setting it down near her empty water glass as they finished the last item. “Okay, so, shall we read the final verdict?” she asked, her voice adopting a small lilt. Jen nodded eagerly, ushering for her to start.

“Do graffiti art. Bike the Golden Gate Bridge. Crash a wedding. Complete a thousand-piece puzzle. Go ice skating. Learn a new language. Go twenty-four hours without technology. Build a blanket fort. Give a TedTalk. Learn to surf. Pull an all-nighter that isn’t school related. Go to Disneyland. Conquer a fear. Drastically change some aspect of physical appearance. Dance in the rain. Try pole-dancing. Own a pair of red bottoms. Try an unusual food. Bring back letter writing. Fall in love. Learn a magic trick. Have a food fight. Drive Pacific Coast Highway. Go to San Francisco. Sleep in a haunted house. Make gingerbread houses from scratch. Bend a spoon using only the mind. Be an extra in a movie. And finally, make it to next year.”

“That last one’s a little anti-climactic, don’t we think?” Jack mused after Isabelle finished.

“Anti-climactic, but absolutely valid.”

Everyone looked around at each other over their barren breakfast plates and watered-down drinks, trying to determine what to do next. Isabelle made the first move, picking the pen back up and removing the cap. With a few flicks of her wrist, she signed her name down in the bottom corner of the paper. Her handwriting might have been neat, but her signature looked like that of a doctor’s. “Everybody sign,” she instructed, holding out the pen for someone to take.

Alexander grabbed it from her first, tugging the paper closer to him and signing right next to her name in his chicken-scratch excuse of cursive handwriting. And around the paper went, everybody signing their names onto their bucket list to stake some sort of claim, bind their lives to this crumpled piece of paper all in the name of having a fun rest of their year, just serve as a reminder as to where they each belonged: within the confines of this paper, with each other.

He grinned satisfactorily at the bucket list once it made its way back over to him. “Alright then,” he said, pulling out his phone and taking a picture of the paper just for posterity’s sake. He wasn’t to be trusted to keep up with a single sheet of paper. “Now we have fun.”

* * *

 **IMESSAGE**  
Jackie Emerson 💖  
Wednesday

 _ **4:23PM**_  
Hey babes! I just wanted to ask  
you a quick question

 _ **5:45PM**_  
Sorry, I was in class, what’s  
up, Lev???

 _ **5:48PM**_  
No worries! So there’s a frat party  
tomorrow night, Phi Kappa Psi? Mark  
wanted to know if I’d come and I told  
him I may bring a plus one. You can say no,  
of course, I’d totally understand but I just  
thought it might be fun to get out of your head  
 (and apartment) for a little bit!

Just lemme know! 💋

 ** _6:07PM  
_**Sure! I’ll go

 _ **6:10PM**_  
Omg for real?? Excellent!! I can pick you  
up at eight or if you wanna you can just come  
straight to my room after classes and get  
ready w me?? Whatever you want

 ** _6:13PM  
_**I’ll come over to yours about 7:30?

 ** _6:14PM  
_**Works for me! See you then!

* * *

 

The ceilings were blurry.

Little lights from the variety of chargers and alarm clocks and the world beyond the window made blurry dots in the darkness. The sheets were scratchy and uncomfortable, pressing down on her chest so firmly that she felt like she couldn’t breathe. It didn’t help that she had her hand clamped over her mouth to keep the whimpers and suppressed sobs in containment. Every breath was shallow, not nearly enough, but it was rock on the edge of suffocation or risk waking her roommate up.

Parties were supposed to be fun. Jackie wasn’t well-versed in them, but based off the embellished TV shows that the twins watched religiously, they were a quintessential component to the average person’s college experience. They hadn’t been much of a thing at her high school – the children of politicians throwing ragers was a one-way ticket to campaign collateral damage, and everyone she knew was much more obsessed with perfecting college applications anyways. An abnormal idea of fun, but expected.

For once, it would have been nice to just experience fun the way everyone else did. Fun was a word that twisted a rusty blade in the middle of Jackie’s stomach, a word that was synonymous with downfall. Fun prevented lots of things, and all of those other things that Jackie liked to spend her time doing prevented fun. A lonely yet trusted cycle that kept things aligned.

But just like Eve took a giant freakin’ bite of the forbidden fruit, worry and anxiety crept through her bloodstream and powered the tiny whisper in her brain that told her she was missing out. It didn’t tell her _what_ she was missing out on, exactly, it just told her that there was a whole world out there that she had yet to grasp in between her fingers. It filled her head with visions of what New Jackie could look like, enacting scenario after scenario of everything she had the potential to be but hadn’t quite yet unlocked and put into play. It told her that she didn’t have to miss out anymore, convinced her that she wouldn’t. It helped her reply to Leven without the thorough consideration she would’ve applied under any other circumstance. It realigned her priorities and told her to satisfy the need for fun, stop falling prey to perfectionism, and attempt to be normal in a way that would breathe life into the her she wanted to be. It reminded her that plenty of excellence had been shoved down her throat in the past, and that maybe a label of ‘average’ even for the night would help her breathe easier.

Sitting on an Ottoman at the foot of Leven’s bed in hers and Jen’s bedroom while they got ready had been fun. Leven desperately wanted to straighten her hair, Jackie let her. The steam from the iron that rose into the air with every section of her hair was like the weight rising off her shoulders. Relax, it told her. _Breathe_.

She didn’t look anything like herself in the mirror with straight hair. She looked normal, like any other stranger would. She could barely breathe when she caught a quick glimpse of herself in the bathroom.

She’d been able to breathe fine in Cowlings. She was breathing fine in the Uber on the way to the party. Her chest felt a little tight as they stood on the steps outside of the house before walking in, but she could still breathe. Leven caught notice that she was slightly apprehensive and grabbed her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze as they walked through the front door.

Cycles. Everything was a cycle. The longer she stayed at the party, the more _normal_ she felt, the harder it got to breathe.

That was her punishment for eating the forbidden fruit, she supposed.

Everything had been fine to begin with. Dark, somewhat hazy, music from another room vibrating through the walls and into her bones, but fine. Jen disappeared first, breaking away from Leven the minute they crossed over the threshold at the sight of a familiar face. Leven stuck with Jackie, holding onto her wrist as she pulled her through the rooms and past people dancing, people holding onto red cups and in the middle of meaningless conversations, people pressing up against other people with hooded eyes and suggestive smirks. There were a lot of people and Leven was her anchor.

Leven was her anchor and Mark was the blade, cutting her free the minute he put a cup in Leven’s hand.

The ceiling was blurry, the lights were blurry, the sheets were scratchy and the tears burned like fire as they ran down Jackie’s chin, along her neck and through the pillowcase.

Leven tried. She did. Jackie couldn’t say that she blamed her because she couldn’t. How could she? Leven was normal. Leven found things like frat parties fun – she enjoyed herself whenever she had liquor and cheap beer swimming in her head, her hand clutching tighter to Mark every time she loosened up a little on her grip to Jackie. Leven tried to introduce her to people that she knew, tried to include her in the conversations and the games and the dances. Jackie was the one who wasn’t normal. Jackie was the one who couldn’t find anything fun about a party, something that was born straight from the womb of fun, instead growing more anxious and finding it harder to breathe by the minute.

She’d tasted alcohol before at dinners and galas, champagne bubbles fizzing in her throat and wine making her head feel fuzzy. Jen popped up at some point, offering to make Jackie a drink. She felt stupid, waiting for Leven to pipe back up like she had the day of the tailgate and say that she was a freshman, she wasn’t able to drink. Leven was no longer her voice or her shield. Leven didn’t care one way or another now that Mark was here and they were playing her favorite song somewhere in the house. She knew feeling betrayed was juvenile. The betrayal, the juvenility, her irregularity, the cheap alcohol, it all burned when Jackie took a sip of the drink Jen made for her.

She vaguely remembered thinking she should’ve asked if she could bring Isabelle too. Isabelle would have been a safety blanket. _Or would she?_ Isabelle wasn’t her. Isabelle could have easily found her rhythm the minute she stepped over the threshold and dipped her toes in. It still would’ve resulted in the same thing: Jackie, alone, out-of-place and ready to leap out of her skin. Trying to keep from crying.

This was not the way she acted in her head. In her head, she flourished and thrived, dancing and laughing with Leven and Jen and Mark and whoever-the-fuck-else. In her head, her anxieties didn’t feel crippling, her obvious displacement like a neon sign flashing overhead.

This was what she was missing out on. Regret was a sour dose of medicine to swallow. There was a reason curiosity killed the cat and everything else that came along.

The ceiling was blurry, the lights were blurry, the sheets were scratchy, the pillowcase around her neck was damp, and Jackie silently prayed Isabelle was a heavy sleeper.  

She held out until about eleven o’clock. They’d gotten to the party somewhere around nine, Jen wanting to go for In-N-Out before strolling up. In-N-Out had been fun. Jackie tried her hardest to have fun, do as everyone else did (the golden rule of fitting in), but it wasn’t enough. She wasn’t a priority to Leven or Jen anymore, the two of them floating around like drunk butterflies as they made their rounds. Her expectations felt foolish now that they were shattered at her feet, and all she wanted to was go back to the room.

There was one thing that Jackie perhaps hated even more than failure: feeling stupid. That was how she felt as she traipsed throughout the frat house, willing herself not to cry while looking for Leven to tell her she was calling an Uber and leaving. There was a very quiet voice suggesting she take Leven and Jen with her, but why should she ruin their fun? They seemed fine. They’d done this a dozen times before. It was _her_ that was the flaw.

“Lev, I’m leaving.” Her voice was shaky as she lifted it above the volume of the music. Leven’s eyebrows knitted together, concern splashed over her face like someone had thrown a shot of tequila at her.

“What?” she pouted.

Jackie just nodded. “Yeah, I’ve just…I’ve got class, and a lot of homework to do tomorrow and I just wanna call it a night.”

The frown etched into Leven’s mouth, but she didn’t argue. “Okay,” she said half-heartedly, her words running together like watercolor paints. “How are you getting home though? You’ve…you’ve been drinking. And I don’t want you walking. Not safe.”

“I, um, I already called an Uber.”

Leven peeled herself off of Mark long enough to give her a hug and walk her out to the curb, Jackie biting down so hard on her lip she swore she would draw blood any second to keep from crying. _You’re gonna be strong,_ she commanded herself. _You are not going to cry. You are not going to let anyone see that you are weak. You are not going to give anyone any reason to think you can’t handle this. You tried and failed at having fun, so back to the default settings you go – no weaknesses. No anxieties. Not that they can see._

Everything around her on her journey home was silent and lonely. It was empty, leaving plenty of room for the swelling emotions in Jackie’s chest. Her lungs were aching for oxygen, but she knew the minute she took a single breath, she would fall apart. So she waited, moving through the stillness of a Thursday night and suppressing it all until it clawed its way out of her or she made it home. Whichever came first.

Isabelle was already asleep when Jackie came tip-toeing back into their apartment. The TV in the living room had been left on, presumably for her. She went to the refrigerator for a sip of water, her hands shaking and the tears that had formed in the elevator now burning in the corners of her eyes.

Her hands unscrewed the cap, taking a small sip and letting it flush the bad taste of alcohol from her throat. _What was I thinking?_ The thought was loud in her brain. _What was I thinking? What the fuck was I thinking? What have I done?_

She slumped against the refrigerator door as it closed, her eyes stealing a quick look towards the bedroom. The door was shut, darkness coming from the sliver of space between the door and the hardwoods. Isabelle was asleep. She was finally alone, giving the tears the freedom they wanted to run down her face.

She felt herself breathe for the first time in two hours and it all felt wrong. It was like she couldn’t get enough air down her windpipe. _What have I done?_ The tears made everything in the room go blurry, the refrigerator holding her weight and her arms wrapping around herself in attempt to feel safe, feel comforted, feel secure.

This wasn’t what she’d signed up for. The true colors of people, the cheap alcohol, the inability to breathe and the burning in the pit of her stomach that felt like someone had just stabbed her, the way that that party had opened her eyes up all the way and shook her violently from a dream she’d been prancing around in for weeks now. That back there was college. That was not what she had thought it would be. She’d wanted so desperately to say otherwise, to say that her decision in being a maverick and breaking from the mold set for her by coming to USC had been the right one and that everyone else had been wrong. She didn’t like being the one who was wrong.

And that was all she felt. Wrong. Mistaken. Cheated. Deceived. Suffocated. Anxious. Alone.

She kicked her shoes off at the door to the bedroom, creeping inside from the bathroom entrance (it was quieter) and crawling straight into bed while doing her best to hold her breath. She didn’t want to wake up Isabelle with her crying. If she did, then she’d have to explain what was wrong, and then she’d have to explain that _she_ had been wrong, and it didn’t seem like a fun conversation to have at nearly midnight with someone who felt more like a stranger now than when she’d left.

Everything felt strange to her now. _That’s what you get_ , she figured quietly. _When you try to mess with how things are._ High School Musical had said it best: stick to the status quo.

You got bit in the ass when you didn’t.

She’d held tight to her dreams of her freshman year in college, letting that vision in her head play out like a movie and carry her through the hell high school was. The movie was over now, the film reels all up in smoke. If tonight was indicative of what college was, what the next four years awaited, then she wasn’t sure she wanted to be here.

Pulling the covers tighter around her chest, Jackie could hear her mom’s voice echo in her brain and twist knots around in her stomach. _If you aren’t happy about something, you need to speak up now while you’ve still got the chance._

 _I promise you_ , she’d said, _I don’t want to be anywhere else but here. This is what I want._

 _As long as you’re happy, sweetheart,_ her mom had replied, the typical response. Moms knew best. Maybe her mother could see the future. Knew this moment was coming and was only trying to save her from it.

The ceiling was blurry, the lights were blurry, the sheets were scratchy, the tears were drowning her, she hoped Isabelle couldn’t hear her choking on her own sobs, and the doubts she’d tried to believe would stay away welcomed themselves in.


	7. all the words that you don't say speak the loudest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...........I PROMISE I'M HERE. believe me, i am not happy with myself either - no one enjoys just staring at the same 800 words for over two months. i thought i was gonna be ~smooth~ in posting a oneshot idea i'd started back in early 2018 (and then abandoned like i do with everything else) for NYE but as you can tell, that didn't happen, and then i just kinda gave up on it after i got halfway through january and couldn't bring myself to write words, and THEN this semester showed up outta nowhere and the last several weeks have completely evaporated without me even noticing, SO. here we are, after a nightmare of computer issues that i would never like to relive, avowing to never use word again, and a couple thousand words later (because you deserve it). i promise that i am still as in love with this story and these characters as ever and have so much left that i am itching to write that you'll be wishing i'd give up the ghost at some point. 
> 
> thank you for having my back and dealing with my bullshit, reading this story, leaving comments, sharing it with your friends, all of that sweet lovely stuff. i still don't deserve any of you and the fact that you guys still enjoy these people and this fandom after all this time, enough so that you'd wanna read even _more_ bullshit by yours truly is just really, really kind and heartwarming to know i'm not alone. one of these days i'll find something else that inspires me and move on (maybe) but today is not that day. 
> 
> chapter title is from lennon stella's fortress. come hang out with me on instagram @tributediaries because thg is alive 'n thriving over there and it's nice not living in an actual graveyard. happy reading. xx

“I miss him.”

Leven hated drunk Jen. Jen was a hard person for people to get along with; there was something about Jen’s in-your-face nature that turned some people off at first glance. Jen was all rough edges, sharp corners and no pool cover. Volatile, blunt, excessive, dogmatic, vulgar. She was a lot, and because she was much too strong for some people’s tastes, she didn’t have very many friends of the female variety. But even with all of that on top, Leven still saw all the good parts to Jen worth loving: loyal to the bone, enthusiastic, witty, tenderhearted, always choosing to see the best and the brightest in everything. Jen loved people even if they didn’t love her. That would be her downfall, especially once alcohol got thrown into the equation.

Drunk Jen was impossible to deal with, on all accounts. For Leven, drunk Jen was taking all of the things about her best friend that she wasn’t crazy about, putting it in a blender, and then downing it in one gulp. Drunk Jen sucked the life out of her because to drunk Jen, there was no such thing as reason, or logic, or even getting a word in otherwise.

Leven glanced across the room, where Jen was sprawled out on the rug at the foot of her bed. Leven was up on her own bed, fuzzy brain starting to return to some sense of clarity thanks to the dull pounding against her forehead.  She just wanted to ball up underneath her covers and sleep off the tipsy, but instead, she had to outlast Jen and attempt to contain all the stupid ideas.

“No, you don’t,” she groaned, closing her eyes and tilting her head up towards the ceiling. It was the closest she was going to get to sleep until Jen inevitably passed out.

“ _Yes_ , I do,” Jen argued. “Just because I don’t say it all the fuckin’ time doesn’t mean I don’t miss him. You try dedicating all of that time, all…all of yourself to somebody like that. You don’t know what it was like to give him years, Bino.” _Maybe not, but I’ve given you close to that just letting you complain about him._

“Okay, so you miss him. But it’s only because you’re drunk and lonely and not into girls. Otherwise I would have jumped your bones already, and you wouldn’t have given a second thought towards _He Who Must Not Be Named.”_

“And I’m the one who says too much.”

Leven opened her eyes, shrugging. “It’s true. Tomorrow morning you’re going to go right back to being the president of the Hemsworth Hate Brigade and you won’t remember any of this shit.”

Her speech might have been slurred, but Jen’s words were razor sharp. “I remember all of it, thank you. I always do.”

“Well maybe you should start remembering all of the shit he did to you and why missing him is a terrible idea.”

Jen’s eyes were slits as she gunned Leven down with her sights alone, holding it out for a long, drawn-out moment. Leven didn’t care, her own gaze shifting back up to the ceiling after a few seconds of the stare down. Drunk Jen was childish. It didn’t faze her in the least.

Time didn’t hold much of a concept when she was drunk, so it could have been a few seconds or close to an hour later when she noticed the scuffling out of the corner of her eye. “What are you doing?” she muttered.

Jen’s garbled reply went unheard due to it being mumbled under her breath, but she kept fumbling around on her knees trying to find something that she obviously thought was in her immediate vicinity. “Shit,” she swore as she tried to yank her purse down off the bedpost it was looped around. Leven sat up a little straighter, eyebrows furrowed.

Her voice was cautious. “Jen…”

“I can’t find…my fucking… _phone_ ,” Jen huffed exasperatedly as her hand missed the opening to her purse for the third time.

“Why do you need—” Leven’s brain caught up with the rest of the program right as the words started to slip off her tongue, her eyes widening as it all clicked inside her head. “No.”

There was once a time when Jen would have stared at her like a deer in headlights the second she knew she’d been caught and Leven had clued in, but tonight she was either too drunk or too wrapped up in her own misery to care. She just kept on rummaging. “ _Yes._ ”

“ _No,_ ” Leven growled, forcing herself out of bed and onto the floor where Jen was about to make a very, very poor decision. Containment over damage control. That was the dealing-with-drunk-Jen strategy that Leven practically had to a science at this point, mostly because Jen made the exact same mistakes when she got wasted. She would be damned if they went down this road _again_. Last time had been nearly impossible to clean up.

The floor felt like it was swaying underneath her as she crawled towards Jen. Jen gave up on trying to blindly find her phone, flipping her bag upside down and letting the contents fall out onto the rug unceremoniously. Leven spotted the phone in the middle of the pile, diving for it and praying that her depth perception wasn’t complete shit.

It wasn’t, but her hand landed on top of it at the exact same time Jen’s did. Leven’s hand was a few milliseconds faster, her palm bearing down on the screen with the tight grip of Jen’s hand around hers. Their heads shot up, eyes locking together in a standoff.

It was a battle of the wills, except Leven knew that there would be no eventual cave and surrender. It was win or lose.

“Jen.”

“Leven.”

Leven’s fingers curled a little tighter around the edges of the phone, Jen following in her lead in retaliation. “Let go of me.”

“Give me my phone,” Jen countered.

Leven shook her head defiantly. “You’re not calling him.”

“And you’re not my fuckin’ mother. Give me the phone, Leven.”

“No,” Leven ground out through gritted teeth.

Jen apparently wasn’t looking to give in any time soon, instead opting to dig her heels in even further. She put her other hand to use, locking it around Leven’s wrist and doing her hardest to physically pry her hand off. Leven held her ground, gripping onto the phone as tightly as she could to keep it pinned to the ground. “Get... _off!”_ Jen growled in frustration.

“No way.”

“Why do you have to be so goddamn stubborn? Why can’t you just let me call him, what the fuck is it gonna hurt?”

“You! It always hurts _you._ ”

“It’s got nothing to do with you, you shouldn’t even care one way or another,” Jen spat, emphasized by another pull to Leven’s wrist.

That stung a little. Leven knew that arguing with Jen while she was drunk was the equivalent of reasoning with a brick wall and it wouldn’t amount to anything, especially considering the likelihood of Jen remembering anything come tomorrow was slim. But it still stung that some part of Jen really and truly believed that Leven wouldn’t care about something that was going on with her. That she wouldn’t care about her, plain and simple. For fuck’s sake, it was basically her sole responsibility as Jen’s friend to care and keep her from doing all of the stupid shit she’d regret later. There was no one else here _but_ her because Jen had the tendency of surrounding herself with fair-weather friends who _genuinely_ didn’t care about what she put herself through, yet she had the audacity to think Leven didn’t care? Just because she was honest?

It was a little sad, Leven reckoned, the more she thought about it. However, it was slightly complicated to feel bad for Jen in any capacity when she was busy digging her fingernails into her skin.

Her taking offense to Jen’s words (something she knew by now she shouldn’t bother doing) wound up leaving her vulnerable, creating a window of opportunity for Jen to take her by surprise and snatch the phone right out of her grip. “Ha!” Jen gloated, smug smile on her face as she dangled it in front of Leven to show off.

“Jen, give me the phone.” Her words fell on deaf ears, Jen already leaning away as she started punching in numbers to unlock the phone.

There was no way in hell she was going to wave her white flag. They’d been down this road several times before, enough for Leven to know that nothing good awaited them from here. Jen would call him, he’d answer or simply let her go to voicemail (whichever degree of fucked up he was feeling most), and then she’d spend the next week going through the motions: a depression characterized by excessive drinking, skipping classes, and Jen swearing up and down that she was fine when they all knew she wasn’t. Leven would let her make that call over her dead body.

Desperate times called for equally desperate measures. It wasn’t the greatest idea she’d ever had, but it was the only thing she had in her arsenal of last-ditch efforts: Leven’s hand darted out, yanked the phone right out of Jen’s hand and in the same fluid motion, threw it across the room with such finesse that the Trojan football team she now somewhat deserved a position on couldn’t have done any better.

Because of the alcohol in her system, Jen’s brain was a beat behind reality in processing the things around her; her realization that the phone was no longer in her hand and on the other side of the room was a delayed one, but furious nonetheless. “What the _fuck?!”_ she screeched.

Leven used the few seconds on her side to race for the upper hand - if she played dirty, then by default that gave permission for Jen to do so as well, and Jen always came in swinging. She’d pulled herself up by her elbows, upper half of her body leaning against the mattress while her elbows dug into the comforter. _The phone. Where the_ fuck _is the phone?_

It had landed on the far side of her bed, dangerously close to the space where her wall met the mattress. She silently damned aerodynamics, gravity, and Dayo Okeniyi’s football career for not doing her just this one solid and doing, well, more — if the phone had fallen in between the crack and into the floor, then it would be game over. There was no way Jen would be able to move furniture up underneath the bed with alcohol in her system. But, of course, this fight just had to be the long one.

And a rather painful one, seeing as how Jen was now doing her hardest to yank Leven down by the legs and keep her from getting to the phone first.

“You’ll thank me for this later!” she said over her shoulder as she tried her hardest not to accidentally kick Jen in her attempts to shake her off.

“I’ll thank you once you leave me the hell alone!”

Leven could see across the comforter where the phone was opened, the first five digits of his number already punched in. Of course Jen remembered it by heart; of _course_ he hadn’t changed it.

The thought nauseated her.

It also gave her that much more motivation in beating Jen to the phone. Doing her best not to drive her knee into Jen’s face, she crawled her way up the side of the bedpost and onto the mattress. Jen was hot on her heels, only giving her a split moment to act. The phone had to be impossible to get to.

So with reflexes she didn’t know were possible when tipsy, Leven grabbed the phone, peeled back the top of her comforter, and tossed the phone underneath it.

And then she sat on it.

_Good luck with that, Jen._

A few seconds later, Jen’s body came catapulting over the side of the bed and across Leven’s stretched out legs as she lunged for where the phone had been just a few moments ago. Her hands were splayed out, desperately reaching out only to grab fistfuls of Leven’s comforter. “Where is it?” she said, the hysteric edge in her voice lifting it an octave and threatening to crack at any second. “What did you do with it?”

Jen’s head turned to look back at Leven, the expression on her face like that of a wild animal: frantic, panicked, afraid. “Are you fucking kidding me?” she yelled.

“It’s for the best,” Leven said softly, trying to hold her composure together.

“For....for the best... _fuck you!”_ Jen all but screamed in her face as she rolled over on her side, face contorted in fury and the tears already beginning to pool in her eyes. “Fuck you, and all your self-righteous bullshit thinking you know what’s best for me and then looking at me like I’m some kind of goddamn idiot when I don’t listen! You don’t know it all, Leven, you’re not an expert!”

Leven could have very easily retaliated and argued back, telling her that she _was_ an idiot for not listening to the one person who ever bothered being honest with her, even if wasn’t exactly what she wanted to hear, and that that didn’t make her wrong. Instead, she bit down on her lip and kept quiet. Jen was ripping through the stitches that she used as her façade when others were around at a dangerous pace, and Leven was left with a choice: apply pressure or rub salt into the wound. As it was, Jen may as well have been bleeding out all over her pajama pants.

If she had to be the villain here, then so be it.

She let Jen scream her obscenities about how Leven was being unreasonable and ridiculous and sticking her nose in places where it wasn’t involved or needed until she was red in the face and the dam of tears had broken and were now falling down her cheeks in sheer anger. It didn’t have anything to do with the phone or her obstructing Jen’s ability to make a call anymore, but instead everything to do with how Leven was interfering with her happiness. Leven stayed quiet, waiting out the storm. Eventually, Jen harrumphed and let her head fall down in the space between Leven’s leg and the comforter, shielded by her folded arms. There was one last muffled scream of frustration before she went quiet.

The anger had passed, and it was only a matter of time before the sadness sunk in. Leven cautiously rested a hand on top of Jen’s back after a few moments of sniffles increasing in volume, feeling the vibrations of the sobs as they built up inside and forced their way out of her. She knew Jen was breaking underneath her fingertips, and it put her in the very same position it always did. Unsure of how to feel. Knowing that she had it coming yet still wanting to protect her, hold all of the pieces together.

“Babe…” Leven whispered quietly, hand moving in slow circles over the small of Jen’s back to comfort her the only way she knew how while she cried. Words felt hollow at this point, a waste of her breath like they always seemed to be. She let her head fall back until it met the backboard, eyes beginning to grow heavy with sleep. They were at the home stretch now; it was likely that Jen would cry herself to sleep and leave the two of them stuck in this exact position until morning came glaring through the cracks in their blinds.

“I just miss him,” Jen whimpered in between sobs as she curled up on her side, body tucking in towards Leven. “Am I ever gonna not miss him?”

Leven truly hoped so.

* * *

As a business admin major, boredom was not hard to come by. Josh had experienced it in spades at this point; it wasn’t so much that he spun a wheel and decided he’d take the major it landed on, or that he had picked something to dedicate the foreseeable future towards that didn’t leave him excited. It was more to do with USC dictating that if they wanted the degree, they undergo the blandest classes (without hope of escape or evasion) paired with the most monotonous people on their payroll.

Accounting II was significantly worse than Accounting I, something Josh didn’t think truly possible. Accounting I in the spring had been a nightmare where three shots of espresso minimum were obligatory in keeping up with the class despite meeting in the middle of the day, and a correlation between tests and lectures did not exist. He could still remember Tara Macken turning around one day after a test, stating they should at least receive foreign language credit for suffering through the class. He didn’t disagree, either.

The only bright spot to Accounting I was the knowledge that commiseration was universal in the class, something Dayo was a part of as well. The two of them wound up in the same class thanks to the way one of their credits lined up, sitting next to one another in the auditorium and doing more than just exchanging a few pained glances throughout the hour. They paired up any time their professor wanted them to do any kind of partner work, and for the final, Dayo had invited him and a few others over to his apartment for a study session. Josh liked Dayo, too. People like Dayo often came with a whole suitcase of assumptions and stereotypes considering he was the closest thing USC had to royalty save for _actual_ royalty – Jack swore up and down there was a real prince enrolled there – but he was nothing like Josh ever would have figured. They were something like friends, friends who didn’t really circulate in the same friend circles or were first choice picks for anything, but friends all the same.

Surviving Accounting I should have been the end of it, but Accounting II was shaping up to be a nightmare as well, one that seemingly had no end in sight. The only perk in Josh’s opinion was that he at least had Dayo; not only did Dayo actually understand what the hell was going on and could explain it in a way that at least somewhat made sense, but he and Dayo had established something like an unspoken agreement when they’d registered for the same section of Accounting II. If one looked like they were drifting off, the other had full permission to hit the other awake.

It was a trusty system, one that Josh knew he’d be taking plenty of advantage of today. He could barely keep his eyes open waiting on their professor to actually arrive to class. Typically, Josh was there early since this was his first class of the day (first class being at one in the afternoon was _definitely_ luck of the draw) while Dayo usually pushed it down to the minute because of gym time and the much-needed shower scheduled beforehand on another end of campus.

Josh was hoping Dayo would come in sooner rather than later, the auditorium slowly starting to fill up the closer the clock inched towards one. Unassigned assigned seats were very much a thing, but there were always those few stragglers who threw things off for everyone else by neglecting it and if Josh was going to survive today, he needed Dayo Okeniyi in the seat next to him ready to punch his arm out from underneath his chin at a moment’s notice.

He started sifting through his bookbag, rummaging for his laptop and notebook to pass the time and keep him somewhat productive. He purposefully pulled everything out individually and slowly to give Dayo all the time in the world to come save him from himself. Even as he opened up his laptop and glanced down at the time (two minutes before class started), Dayo still hadn’t arrived.

 _If he bails today of all days, I’ll kill him_ , Josh thought morbidly.

Down at the front of the auditorium, the sound of the doors opening signaled the arrival of their professor. Professor Herring was a tiny wisp of a man who couldn’t have been younger than forty with his receding hairline, completely unconfident in the content of Accounting II and made it very obvious to his students that he would prefer to be anywhere else on Planet Earth, but cost of living in LA was high and he had to do something other than go on nature walks to pay the bills. Josh slumped down a little further in his seat, disappointed at the lack of Dayo. It was going to be a brutal, brutal ninety minutes.

Professor Herring had just logged into the computer down as projected onto the giant screen to find that day’s PowerPoint when Josh heard the scuffling somewhere on the opposite side of the aisle. His head turned to see what the commotion was, figuring it would be someone who had dropped all of their things very unceremoniously or a kid returning from the bathroom and attempting to get back to his seat in the middle of the aisle.

It was neither of those things. Instead, it was Dayo, Josh delighted and confused all at once at the sight of him. Delighted because now he wouldn’t have to suffer alone (Accounting II was very much a team effort as far as he was concerned), confused because it didn’t look _anything_ like Dayo even though it definitely was him.

Rarely had Josh ever seen Dayo wear anything other than athletic wear – it had come as a shock to him the first time Dayo had worn jeans last semester. His wardrobe was strictly casual at all times, which Josh could understand, especially when considering Dayo practically lived at the gym. It was convenient. Yet here he was today, wearing a pair of dark-wash jeans and white button-down with the first few buttons undone, covered by a leather jacket that it was still way too hot outside to be wearing.  The closer he got to his usual seat, Josh could see something in his ears that had caught the light of the fluorescents and was sparkling. Diamond studs – _Dayo had his ears pierced._

Forget needing to hit him, the sight of Dayo dressed in something other than a USC t-shirt was enough to stun anyone wide awake.

Dayo took his seat right as Herring got the PowerPoint opened. He looked over at Josh to offer something – friendly smile, frustrated wince, Josh wasn’t sure – and was met with the sight of Josh staring at him like he’d grown three heads. “What?” he whispered defensively as he bent down to pull out his books.

Josh pulled up the chat window on his MacBook and started typing away furiously.  

 

 **IMESSAGE**  
Dayo Okeniyi  
Monday

 ** _1:03PM_**  
DUDE

 ** _1:05PM_**  
What????

 ** _1:05PM_**  
WHOSE CLOTHES DID YOU STEAL

 ** _1:06PM  
_**No one’s?????

 ** _1:07PM_**  
I don’t believe you

No offense but you literally live in Adidas

Explain yourself

 

 ** _1:10PM  
_**Leven

 ** _1:11PM  
_**Explanation accepted

* * *

“Okay, this is me waving the white flag,” Jackie announced dramatically as she flopped backwards onto the couch. “I’m just gonna fail statistics. I give up. I can’t do it anymore.”

“Jackie Emerson, giving up on a class?” Jack gasped, feigning disbelief. He let the refrigerator door shut behind him nosily as he walked over to the sink. “Joshua, fetch me my phone, I need to alert the local news.”

Jackie lifted her head up from where it had fallen in Isabelle’s lap to shoot him a pointed glare. “Not funny.”

“Oh, it’s hilarious, shortcake,” Jack continued, unwrapping his leftovers from lunch the previous day. “You of all people admitting you’re throwing in the towel? They’re probably having a blast on the new ice rink down in Hell.”

“It’s bad,” Isabelle chimed in as she nodded her head in agreement. “The man came in class last week and referred to it as ‘statastics.’ _Statastics,_ Quaid.” Judging by the way she spoke, she’d been privy to a lot of Jackie’s rants on the following subject and was glad someone else was being dragged into the conversation.

“He’s an adjunct professor,” Jackie clarified. “But that doesn’t excuse anything – whatever degree he got came from some coloring book sheet he printed off of the Internet.”

If there had ever been a chance to get rid of Jackie and Isabelle, that ship had long since sailed. They regularly came over to Jack and Josh’s room or insisted they come over to theirs, spending a good chunk of their free time in one another’s company doing homework, eating, or sitting through a binge-session of Law and Order: SVU where Jackie would mumble counter-arguments under her breath during all of the court scenes. The four of them were close to inseparable.

The girls were also handy assets to have, as they’d come to learn over the last few weeks. Distracting Jena, troubleshooting all of the technology when it decided to stop working, accompanying them on any adventure possible (really, it was just the girls taking advantage of their transportation) and keeping them out of trouble, being primetime entertainment when cable didn’t cut it, servicing as study partners or gym buddies (Isabelle mostly, Jackie was _no_ fun at the gym); the boys could no longer distinctly remember a time when Jackie and Isabelle hadn’t been there. They’d filled a void they didn’t even know existed in their lives, made things feel full. Of course, it was a mutual exchange. The girls dealt with their bullshit, so by default, it meant the boys would have to return the favor.

Usually, it was just like it was tonight: the two of them bitching about something related to their classes. Isabelle complained about how all of her classes were beating her into the ground, Jackie complained about the overall incompetency of everyone in her classes whether they sat next to her or were at the head of the room.

“I can’t do it anymore,” Jackie whined. “My parents raised me not to pick fights with authority figures because no one likes _that_ asshole who argues with the professor but it takes everything in me sometimes not to…challenge the man to a fist-fight or some shit.”

“Pause,” Josh interjected, forming a T shape with his hands. “Do we just not like the man because he’s incompetent or are you struggling because he’s incompetent?”

Jackie’s answer was sound. “Both.”

Jack came sauntering back into the living area of the room with both hands full of leftover pizza, sitting down on the side of the couch where the only part of Jackie that was sprawled across was her feet. “What stats did you say it was?”

“Foundations.”

Jack shrugged noncommittally, taking a bite of his cold pizza. “Easy.”

That got Jackie’s attention, her chin doubling as she glared down the couch at him. “What did you say?”

“Easy,” he repeated. “Foundations is basically entry-level stats, it’s all generic as fuck and easy. If you wanna talk about challenging math, shortcake, talk to me about AP Calculus.”

“Now wait a damn minute.” Jackie came shooting up out of Isabelle’s lap, rocking forward so she was now sitting upright with her legs crossed underneath her and a few inches closer to Jack. Her eyes were narrowed as she studied him intensely, the hard front of disbelief unwavering. “You? Took AP Calculus?”

“BC,” Jack replied smoothly. The total look of bewilderment on Jackie’s face seemingly went unnoticed – that, or it didn’t faze him in the slightest.

“What’d you score on the exam?”

“Four.”

“You got a _four?!”_ she shrieked. Behind her, Isabelle’s jaw dropped, sign that she had officially joined the shock fest.

Jack’s face was stoic as he exhaled. “Jacqueline,” he said levelly. “What am I majoring in?” The look he received back from Jackie was completely blank, her eyes wide in suggestion for him to continue before her brain actually short-circuited. “Computer science.” It still didn’t seem to register with her even after he filled in the blank.

“I thought you were majoring in video game making,” Isabelle protested softly.

He rolled his eyes. “Gaming development,” he corrected. “Which is a concentration track for _computer science_ – honestly, guys, did you think I would still be in the science department if I was really as dumb as I looked?”

One of Jackie’s eyebrows arched in contest. “How honest of a response do you want to that?”

“I don’t know whether to be hurt or offended that you really thought I was that brainless,” Jack sniffed playfully, his default personality returning from whatever planet it had momentarily vacationed to.

“I don’t know whether to kiss or kill you for neglecting to tell me that _you could help me with statistics_ _until now_ ,” Jackie countered.

“You never asked.”

For a moment, he saw something dangerous flash in Jackie’s eyes, making him quick to take another bite of pizza to force his mouth shut. He wasn’t wrong though; the girls had never actually asked for his help on any of the stuff that he found rather easy, just assumed he was none the wiser and stuck to their normal agenda of suffering. He just kept his mouth shut, even if it was sort of counterproductive. And, _okay_ , he secretly loved the idea of having to see the great and mighty Jacqueline Emerson ask him for his assistance on what was otherwise her area of expertise. 

Jackie unfolded her legs, rising from the couch. “Where are you going?” Josh asked as Jackie went shuffling past him determinedly.

“To get my statistics homework!” she called over her shoulder. “There won’t be a white flag from me – not today, Mahoney!”

She marched out of their room and let the door fall back on the stopper forcefully. A beat later, Isabelle pulled herself off of the couch and scampered off behind Jackie, likely going to fetch her own math homework for what Jack could only assume would be an impromptu crash course. “Well,” he said once Isabelle was out of the room and it was only him and Josh left. “Guess that was that.”

Josh shook his head as he returned back to whatever he was looking at on the laptop balanced between both of his legs. “You’re so going to regret telling Jackie you made a four on an AP exam. She’s either gonna dissect you to figure out what’s in your brain or turn you into her own personal homework hotline.”

“Oh, I didn’t make a four,” Jack corrected him slyly, the smirk revealing itself from the shadows of his otherwise emotionless expression. “I made a five. There’s no way in hell I’m telling her that now, though. Saving it for a rainy day – and for when I’ve got a camera on me.”

* * *

Was it possible to be grateful for someone you barely knew? Isabelle didn’t think it was too far out of the realm of plausibility; personally, she was counting all of her lucky stars one-by-one when it came to how Dayo had seemingly fallen into her lap right when she needed him.

It wasn’t much of a secret that her intro psych class was driving her into the ground. If this was the predictor of success (or survival) in the rest of her major, then hopes were not high and the future remained bleak. Picking psych as her major was playing it safe, truthfully. Isabelle didn’t really know what she wanted to do with her life, especially considering how the last several months of her life had veered wildly off course from what she’d mapped out. Despite the offhand comments from one of her teachers her senior year of high school about psychology being a nearly-useless major, psychology was broad. It gave wiggle room for all of the uncertainty she still had lingering in her brain.

That said, the safe bet was really shaping up to be a breakdown on the horizon.

Isabelle was a good student. She prided herself on that – even if her idea of being a good student just meant that she had a strong memory and content was easy for her to memorize. School had never been genuinely hard for Isabelle up until now. Like nearly all of the other classes she was enrolled in this semester, intro psych was a gen-ed requirement, which meant the class sizes were upward of two hundred, professors flew through content even when it didn’t make sense, and everything felt so detached that it was water off a duck’s back. None of it stuck, none of it was remotely coherent, and it brought her one step closer to ripping out all of her hair. She wasn’t quite yet in Jackie-stress territory, but the girl was certainly rubbing off on Isabelle.

Dayo was the blessing that blended in with the wallpaper. Intro psych had been one of his gen-ed classes and he’d managed to survive it. When she’d brought it up at OGCP and he mentioned how he fared in the class, it quickly became a no-brainer for Isabelle, ever the believer in the philosophy of _work smarter, not harder_. She’d gypped his number from Josh’s phone after that night and started texting him regularly.

Finally, Dayo gave up on any attempts of servicing as the homework hotline and just invited her over to his apartment complex for the Okeniyi-approved crash course. So, _yes_ , even if she didn’t really know Dayo from Adam’s house cat, she was beyond thankful he was willing to make the time between his own classes and football schedule to help her out.

They settled on a Friday afternoon, Dayo giving Isabelle his room number in Webb Tower and the entry code for the door. There was an away game that weekend, Coach squeezing in a last practice on their own field before departing, so Dayo had told Isabelle to come over sometime around four and he would do his best to get there at the same time.

Isabelle ran the idea by Jackie Thursday night at dinner. “Does this sound like a plot to kill me?” she mused halfway through a bite of pasta. “I mean, isn’t this how every serial killer movie starts – stupid, naïve girl goes to apartment of seemingly generous stranger and then she’s like, never seen again? And then said killer goes to all the missing person’s vigils and pretends to be really concerned when in reality, her body is stuffed in the freezer in his basement?”

“Oh, god, Iz,” Jackie winced. “I thought I was bad, but you are infinitely worse.”

“Hello! I need to know if I’m walking into a plot! Help me!”

Jackie steepled her hands, resting them down on the table next to her bowl. “Here’s what I think: it goes against Jackie Code to let you meander off to someone’s apartment by yourself, and I will be damned when the day comes that I have to do a sit-down interview with Lester Holt for a Dateline episode. Josh could tell me Dayo was the one to create heaven and earth and I’m still gonna walk with you to Webb tomorrow before my meeting. Just in case.”

“Thanks, mom,” Isabelle teased.

Jackie wasn’t finished rattling off all of her survival tips. “Also, take my pepper spray with you. You might be a jock but I don’t like the odds of you winning in a fight against Dayo Okeniyi.”

“Again, thank you for the vote of confidence.”

“You asked.”

She had, and she was truly grateful for people like Jackie who had her back. Should anything ever happen to her, she’d want Jackie at the head of the investigation, wrapping up the case with a neat little bow and a list of charges to boot.

Webb Tower was only about a quarter of a mile from Irani, making it a fairly short walk for the girls on Friday afternoon as the time edged towards four. Isabelle didn’t want to show up very early since Dayo was going to be coming straight from practice and wanted to give him as much leeway time as she possibly could, so she kept yanking Jackie and her incredibly long strides back to a slower pace. Jackie was the type to be early to her own damn funeral, whereas Isabelle believed that as long as you showed up within reason, that was all that mattered. Jackie was _also_ the type to walk out in front of oncoming traffic and dare them to hit her, as seen during her attempt to cross four lanes of traffic during early rush hour.

“Alright,” Jackie said as they walked up towards the entrance. “Please keep your fingers and toes crossed that I will not need the pepper spray.”

“Do you want it back?” Isabelle sighed, reaching for the pouch in her backpack Jackie had made her stuff it in.

Jackie shook her head. “I’ll be fine. Text me updates so I know you’re still alive, and call me before you leave.”

“Yes ma’am,” Isabelle saluted mockingly. “Have fun at your…wait, what club is this again?”

“Debate.”

“Which is so perfect for you; all of that arguing in a productive manner.”

Jackie stuck out her tongue, pulling Isabelle in for a quick hug. “Go learn a thing or two about psychology. It’s gonna be your admission ticket back into the room tonight.”

“Maybe I’ll just move in with the potential serial killer to save myself the trouble.”

“Bye babes!” Jackie ushered her along into the building with the insistent wave of her hand, waiting to turn on her heel and walk back in the very direction she’d come once Isabelle had the code punched in, was inside the building and fully out of sight.

Webb was a high-rise, Dayo living on the ninth floor. Apparently, the stairs only worked if you were heading down (Isabelle did _not_ understand that poor logic whatsoever) and there were two elevators for the entire building that, on a good day, functioned at half capacity. She waited for what felt like ages for one of them to come down to the lobby and pick her up, a small group of students all standing around by the time it finally made it to the first floor and peeled the doors back.

The hallways on the ninth floor were brightly lit thanks to the large expanses of windows in one of the lounge areas near the end of the hall. Dayo was in room 957, in the sweet spot between the lounge and the elevator. Something in her didn’t necessarily feel comfortable just using the entry code on Dayo’s door and barging in, so Isabelle made the executive decision to just knock and see if anyone came to the door. Her mother would feel it all the way on the other side of the country if she neglected to use a little common courtesy. Adjusting the straps of her bookbag on her shoulder, she brought her fist up to the door and gave a three-knock pattern.

She took a small step back when she heard the sound of footsteps shuffling towards the door and the lock being turned, handle giving way underneath the pressure of someone’s hand. Isabelle had the comment of how Coach must’ve felt them incredibly prepared to let them leave practice so early on the tip of her tongue, it effectively dying as the door opened all the way.

Standing there in the doorway with a wrinkled white USC t-shirt on and the strong smell of laundry detergent radiating from the room out into the hall was Alexander Ludwig, eyebrows furrowed together at the sight of her. “Isabelle?”

 _Right_ , she knew she and Jackie hadn’t come up for a contingency plan for everything: she’d forgotten entirely about the roommate. “Uh…hi,” she said awkwardly.

Alexander rocked back on his heels, hand still holding the door open as he gave her a quick once-over. “I didn’t know we had a date,” he teased her.

She found her voice somewhere inside of her, face drawing up slightly as she gave a much-more steady response. “We didn’t. I’m here for Dayo.”

“You and Dayo have a date?”

Isabelle rolled her eyes, shifting all of her weight onto her right leg and popping out her hip. “No,” she replied flatly. “The only date I have is with failure, and Dayo’s trying to help me stave that off.”

Alexander smiled down at her, warmth sprawling out over the plains of his face from that point of origin as he chuckled. “I’m just messing with ‘ya, Bells,” he assured. Isabelle felt her shoulders drop slightly. She’d known he was messing, but _still_. “Dayo’s still at practice, though; what time did he tell you to get here?”

“He said to get here at four.”

“He’s an idiot. No way in hell Coach is letting them go on time today with the game being Sunday.” He shook his head, taking a small step back and opening the door wider. “You wanna come on in?”

“Sure,” she said hesitantly, drawing out the word as she stepped over the threshold and brushed past him on her way inside. One thing was for sure: Jackie was going to have plenty to say about this once she was officially in the know.

Most of her friends lived in the residential colleges in the Village, so Isabelle had never seen any of the other housing campus provided, save from the select few pictures the housing department put up on the website. Alexander and Dayo’s apartment was significantly smaller than the one Isabelle was familiar with; the open floor plan was similar, the only difference that there was no room for a breakfast table anywhere between the kitchenette and the living area. Their apartment was bare-bones, very minimal decoration or personality splashed anywhere on the walls. It felt pretty obvious to Isabelle that two guys lived here. Isabelle trailed in slowly, looking around as she came to an awkward stop in the middle of the room. She heard the door shut, Alexander walking up behind her. “You don’t have to stand there until Dayo gets back, you know,” he informed her.

Hair whipping around as she turned to glance over her shoulder, her features quickly drew up. “I know that.”

Alexander made a grand gesture towards the couch with both of his hands. “Then sit.”

To prove some kind of point, Isabelle swiftly slid both straps on her bookbag down her arms and let it unceremoniously drop to the floor. She took a seat on the couch, finding herself sitting rigidly on the edge of the cushion. Outside from the library and the two times at OGCP, she didn’t really know all that much about Alexander. It was hard to make herself at home or the least bit comfortable here even if she had started to warm up to him over the last few weeks. Besides, Jackie would kill her herself if she didn’t stay the least bit on guard.

They weren’t out of the woods on the whole murder thing yet.

“You want anything?” Alexander asked as he crossed into the kitchenette, opening up their refrigerator. He leaned down to assess all of the contents. “We have two bottles of water, a half empty Gatorade that I think is Dayo’s, and a banana.”

Isabelle shook her head. “I’m good.”

“If you’re sure.” She watched him pull out one of the bottles of water for himself, cracking the lid off in the fluid motion of his wrist. “So, what’s got you coming to Okeniyi for help?”

“Intro to psych,” she sighed, her folded hands falling in her lap. “It’s a nightmare.”

“Still?”

Both of her shoulders lifted in a half-hearted shrug. “I don’t know what it is, honestly, but midterms are right around the corner and I need to pull at least a C.”

“Cs get degrees,” Alexander agreed heartily as he raised his water bottle in toast to that.

A silence fell over them, Isabelle’s eyes wandering around her immediate surroundings. The window was to her left, the late afternoon sun brilliantly pouring in without any restriction from the pulled-back curtains or raised blinds. “Nice view, huh?” Alexander piped up. The city was staring back at her, buildings off in the distance glinting in the sunlight. “If it’s a pretty day you can see out all the way to the Coliseum, catch a glimpse of the boys running suicides.”

“Definitely nicer than our view,” Isabelle agreed.

“You live in the Village as a freshman, you don’t get to complain.” She lifted her hands in mock arrest, hints of a smile lingering on her face.

“Oh, what; were you like Josh and Jack busy getting fucked over in Trojan your freshman year?”

A deep laugh from Alexander quickly burst from his chest. “Fortunately, no,” he said, leaning up against the back of the counter. “I was in New/North my freshman year.” Isabelle had done her research on all the dorms back when she’d first started looking into USC. New/North was nowhere near the top of her list on top picks for housing, the prescribed environment being a slight turn-off. She enjoyed a good party when it came her way, but the levels New/North reached only reminded her of the ragers people threw in high school that she purposefully sought to avoid.

“Jack refers to New/North as Greek Hell.”

“Because that’s pretty much what it is: a bunch of people who wanna go Greek, and no air conditioning. First few weeks were absolutely miserable. I would come back after class and strip down to my underwear, open the windows and just lay on my bed in the dark, sweating my ass off.”

“Sounds super charming.”

 “You’re missing out on all the charm of the freshman dorms,” he ribbed, winking at her. “Living off in the Village with the upperclassmen, never knowing the struggle of the thin walls, communal bathrooms, and eating EVK for three meals a day? Seriously, Bells, the _character_ you’re gonna lack because you didn’t get the experience of having noise complaints made to your RA about you practicing guitar at 3 AM is kinda disheartening.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” she reassured. “Our RA Jena is a bloodhound, she can sniff out the slightest rule infractions from the lobby. I think I’m just fine in the character-building department.” Alexander conceded with a small bow. “You play guitar?”

“Sure do. Have been since I was twelve.” Both of Isabelle’s eyebrows raised up into her hairline, and his face fell a little at the expression. “Damn, don’t look _that_ surprised; you do know what my major is, right?” The lack of a change in her facial features was answer enough. “I’m in music industry,” he explained.

“Music industry?” Isabelle repeated incredulously. “Shit, I didn’t know you were so talented.”

He gave her a look. “I’m in the BS track, not the BM. You have to basically be a Juliard waitlister in order to get into the BM program. Besides, I’m much more interested in the business aspect of it all. I don’t wanna be _in_ the music industry, I just want to…well, _be_ the industry itself.”

The pieces were now slowly coming together for Isabelle. “So that’s why I always hear music coming from your headphones whenever we’re in the library.”

Alexander nodded succinctly. “Usually doing production work. We do a shit ton of it.”

“That’s…that’s really cool,” Isabelle concluded, mostly at a loss for words. The number of genuinely cool people she’d met during her time at USC thus far was stacking up, and the reasons as to why only got more interesting. There was Jackie, who spent her summer traveling across Europe and was an all-around fascinating human being full of stories; Leven, a design major who talked about applying for summer internships in New York with designers that Isabelle could only dream of ever being able to afford a pair of socks from; Dayo, the football player who was practically a celebrity in his own right here at USC; and now Alexander, majoring in something that felt like it solely lived within the confines of her TV, a reality that was closer to a dream. In a league of people like this, it was easy for Isabelle to feel utterly ordinary.

Alexander merely shrugged one of his shoulders, setting his water bottle down on the counter behind him. “Eh,” he said dismissively. “It’s got its moments, but it’s still college.”

“So what instruments do you play besides guitar?” Isabelle asked, feet planted onto the ground as she leaned forward slightly.

“Just guitar. I’m okay at working with the keyboards and stuff that we hook up for production purposes since they’re technically sideways, less-complicated guitars, but piano still feels a little foreign to me. And then anybody who has rhythm can play the drums,” he added, that trademark impish grin of his returning.

“That’s still super impressive.”

“What about you? Play any instruments? Have any hidden talents I don’t know about?”

“I can play a little bit of guitar?” Isabelle said uncertainly, head tilting to the side and meeting her raised shoulder. “I’m not the best at it though. My sister got most of the musical ability, I got the athletic.” It was Alexander’s turn to shoot the look of intrigue, Isabelle exhaling. Every time she talked about sports now, she could feel the phantom pains in her leg as if it were reminding her of what had happened and that the loss of identity it had brought about was still very much present. “I played soccer up through sophomore year and ran track from seventh grade on.”

Alexander let out a low whistle. “Shit, didn’t know you were so talented,” he said in clear mock of her from a few moments prior. “Hang tight for a second.”

He then disappeared off, likely into his bedroom. Now that she had a moment where she wasn’t entertaining company, Isabelle pulled out her phone from the pocket of her running shorts to send Jackie a quick text. **_Still breathing!! Dayo hasn’t gotten back from practice yet but Alexander is here keeping me company._**

Jackie’s reply came shooting in a few seconds later. **_Great, another suspect to add to the list should u go missing – keep me posted_**

The sound of a door shutting caught Isabelle’s attention. She lifted her head as she tucked the phone underneath her thigh, treated to the sight of Alexander holding an acoustic guitar with a ridiculous smile on his face. “Nice guitar,” she complimented, his own cheerfulness contagious enough to make the muscles in her face start tugging into the shape of a smile.

“Got it as part of my graduation present. My parents eventually adopted the whole _‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’_ philosophy when they realized there was no changing my mind about my major and figured they’d contribute to the cause.”

Isabelle felt her eyebrows draw in, confusion striking her. “Your parents weren’t supportive?”

Alexander let out a shallow sigh. “I don’t think it was them not being supportive?” He dropped down onto the couch beside her, pulling the guitar into his lap. “I just think it was them being afraid about my taking a risk that could potentially backfire in epic proportions. Music industry doesn’t exactly have the highest post-graduation employment rates. They wanted me to be happy but they also wanted me to be secure, if that makes any sense.” Isabelle nodded, Alexander continuing on. “In my opinion, you can’t really have both. Being happy was more important to me, and it’s kinda hard to change my mind once I get set on something, so they just…had to accept it, I guess.”

Isabelle knew that dance all too well, dancing it many a time herself. Her mother liked to say that Isabelle’s head would have dented steel if she fought back hard enough, claiming title of the more stubborn of the two Fuhrman daughters.

The silence in the room was cut by the sound of a chord, Alexander’s fingers resting on the frets as he absentmindedly strummed. Her head snapped in his direction right as his eyes trailed over to her, the two locking sights on each other. “Know any songs?” he asked, tilting the guitar outwards for emphasis.

She started combing through her memory for any song recollection. “Uh…I think I still remember Ho Hey? And a couple of Taylor Swift songs, but that’s pretty much the extent of it—" She stopped short when she realized that Alexander was all but handing her the guitar. “Oh, no,” she said with a small laugh as she shook her head. “I’m not any good.”

“I don’t believe you,” he insisted good-naturedly, inching the guitar a little bit closer to her. “It’s muscle memory. Just like riding a bike.”

“The second day of my learning to ride a bike without training wheels, I wiped out on the asphalt and split half of my leg wide open.” To prove her point, she gestured down towards her right leg where there was still a faint white scar from the incident.

But when she glanced back up at him, he was still staring at her with expectant eyes, brilliantly blue eyes that compelled her to cave. There was something about the thought of disappointing them that made her feel something along the lines of displeasure, as though they’d freeze over and cut her. Imagining warmth like the kind he radiated to cut off so suddenly felt foreign, but she didn’t want to be introduced to it if she could help it any. “Come on,” he prodded again. She finally sighed in complacency, motioning for him to hand over the guitar.

He was like a child, the excitement lighting up all over him. “Yes!” he hissed. “Alright, Fuhrman, wow me.”

“Lower your expectations,” she warned as she flipped the guitar around – being left-handed meant everything in her world was completely backwards – and put her fingers on the right frets. “It’s been years since I’ve touched one of these.” She didn’t add in the fact that her sister had been the reason she’d started _and_ stopped playing, with good reason.

“I’ve got faith in you.”

 _Misplaced faith,_ she thought to herself. Her fingers felt their way down each of the strings as if refamiliarizing, giving a test strum on F. It sounded okay as far as she was concerned, trying it out a few more times as she tried to recall the right chords for Ho Hey, one of the easier songs that she’d learned that she felt a little more confident in plowing through. It was pretty repetitive from what she remembered, just a lot of C, F, G, and A minor.

She took it slow, feeling the weight of Alexander’s eyes on her as she navigated carefully through the first verse of the song. Not that she would dare admit it to him, but it was somewhat like riding a bike, the muscle memory returning to her when it came to finding each of the chords without feeling the need to glance down and double check. From the corner of her eye she could see the smile on his face deepen. He was evidently very pleased with himself and the results of his persuasion.

After the first verse, she paused to look back up at him. “Keep going,” he encouraged, leaning back into the couch and resting his foot on top of the opposite knee. “You’re fantastic.”

She shot him a sideways look, feeling the ends of her hair tickle her arm as she cocked her head to the side. Both of his hands extended out with palms up, inviting her to continue.

“I’ll keep playing if you sing,” she countered, the devious smile starting to itch as the idea popped into her brain. He looked caught off guard by the suggestion, not even fully opening his mouth to respond before she shut it down. “Nope. That’s my final offer.”

Alexander’s head fell back onto the top of the couch as he groaned. “Oh, c’mon.”

She leaned in towards him, bumping her shoulder up against his playfully. “Sing to me, Ludwig,” she teased.

“ _Alright_ , alright. I guess it’s only fair that you get to return the favor in convincing me to show off.”

“Right you are.”

Her fingers shifted back to A minor, nodding her head a few times as she tried to find the rhythm of the song in her head. She strummed the chord once, then twice, then started to pick up where she left off. This time, though, Alexander joined in. Isabelle watched him closely, the way he sang with his eyes closed and head still leaned back against the couch as if it was something as familiar to him as breathing. It was hard not to be mesmerized by it. His voice was deep, smooth, reminiscent of so many country singers that she’d grown up listening to. She kept strumming her way through the song mostly from muscle memory (just like he’d assured), following the rhythm he was tapping out absentmindedly with his foot.

When she reached the end of the song, she gave a final strum and shifted her eyes up towards his face. He smiled softly at her, the exuberance in her expression only feeding off of the received reinforcement. “See? Told you that you would wow me.”

The warmth in her cheeks started to pool as she handed the guitar over to him, leaning back against the cushions on the couch. “Your turn,” she insisted as both hands fell back into her lap. “Play something for me.”

“You gonna sing?” he asked, an eyebrow lifted in question.

The light bubbling of laughter spilled past her lips. “No chance.”

“Fine, fine,” he huffed mockingly. “I’ll get it out of you one of these days, though. You mark my words.”

Isabelle rolled her eyes, making herself comfortable while Alexander readjusted the guitar on his legs and let his fingers align themselves over whichever chords he had in mind.

She didn’t immediately recognize the song that he started playing, instead choosing to sink further into the couch and entangle herself in the music. Losing track of the time that melted away was unbelievably easy. Her eyes never left him as her mind wandered, leaving the little apartment and drifting off to a place that even she couldn’t quite name. It was just nice, sitting there and coexisting. Alexander had yet to stand out to her in the way that people like Leven and Jack and Josh did, just always sort of there and nice company when present, but he was slowly lifting off of the walls and coming into center view.

Around the time that he reached the end of the song – or maybe not, Isabelle was so lost in the thoughts the music had inspired that it had started fading out of her focus – there was a knock on the door that ripped both of their attention spans away from the moment. “I’ll get it,” Alexander said as he set his guitar down, leaning it up against the school-issued coffee table.

This time, Isabelle’s sights followed him all the way to the door. Curiosity was beginning to truly get the better of her, head tilting back to get a better glimpse of what was unfolding. Her Apple Watch buzzed, likely a text from Jackie checking in to ensure she was still alive that went ignored.

Alexander’s back was to her as he opened up the door, obstructing the view of whoever was standing there in the hallway. “Hey,” she heard him say, voice dropping a few notches in octave in volume. One of his hands lifted, sheepishly rubbing at the back of his neck. “Didn’t know you were gonna come by today.”

“I didn’t either,” came a softer, more feminine voice that Isabelle didn’t recognize whatsoever. She knew she probably shouldn’t, but she only dialed into the conversation further. “But class let out early, work called and said they didn’t need me, so here I am.” A pause, and then: “Am I interrupting something?”

“No!” Alexander stood firm in his resolve. “No. I’m always happy to see you at my door, Linds.”

“But?”

“But nothing. I just…uh, well, I’ve kinda got company right now. Dayo’s not back yet.”

“Company?” The girl reiterated. Isabelle’s stomach twisted a little at the sour way the girl at the door spat out the word, almost like it was poison.

“Yeah, she came by to see Dayo,” Alexander diffused. “He doesn’t know how to tell time anymore, apparently, told her to come by at four.”

“Four? No way in hell Coach is letting them go that early on a game weekend.”

“What I said.” Isabelle’s eyes snapped away the millisecond she noticed the slight turn of Alexander’s head to turn back and look her way, casting her gaze out of the window and pretending to be none the wiser. “Look, if I had known you were gonna show up I would’ve sent her on her way already; just give me five minutes to handle this and we’ll be good to go.”

There were few things that Isabelle Fuhrman was not, and one of those things was a loose end. She didn’t need to be tied up, taken out like she was the trash now that a better way to pass the time had come along. She knew when she wasn’t wanted. It felt a little melodramatic, being miffed by this, but Isabelle wasn’t the type to play nice when people blatantly talked about her as though she wasn’t sitting ten feet away, discussing her like she was some sort of problem that needed to be solved by external forces. It pissed her off.

Her and her time weren’t disposable.

Standing up from the couch, she grabbed the phone that had started to press an indentation into her thigh to text Dayo and let him know she’d just meet him in the lounge on the other end of the hall or _something_ , anything other than being in here. Apparently, she’d misjudged who was behind the previous notification; Dayo had sent her a text only a couple of minutes ago. **_Isabelle!_** , it read, **_Sorry that I’m getting out almost an hour late, I should’ve been a little bit better about time; I hope you haven’t wasted too much of yours waiting on me. I’m on my way over now, wanna meet at the Starbucks across the street from Webb? I’m starved and in need of caffeine, lol_**

Well, at least something had come out of this apparent waste of her time: the knowledge that Dayo Okeniyi definitely was not looking to kill her.

The only murderous one in the equation was Isabelle, but she forced herself to rein it in to just a steady simmer.

She picked her bag up off of the floor, swinging it over her shoulder and looping her arms through the straps as she beelined for the front door. By that point, Alexander had spun around, beginning to make the walk over to the couch and gently tell her she’d been voted off the island. _Fuck that_ , she thought bitterly. She could see the perplexity slapped straight across his face when his eyes found her storming towards the exit. “Dayo’s waiting on me,” she ground out coldly, leaving it at that.

Isabelle didn’t give him time to respond and say his goodbyes as she slipped past him and the blonde that was still standing in the doorway, watching her like a hawk with a rather displeased expression. She commanded herself to swallow the urge to roll her eyes in annoyance.

Yes, it was a little petty, and maybe even a little bit pointless to be irritated by the whole turn south that things had made. But if there was one thing she was steadfast in, it was her refusal to be cast aside in order to create space, a temporary fix, a goddamn option until something else, something more _desirable_ came along. There was no “handling” her, sweeping her up under the rug. She was there, for fuck’s sake, whether you wanted her or not, and she certainly wasn’t pathetic enough to dwell on it or let it get her down.  

She’d just consider this lesson in the psychology of Alexander Ludwig learned.


	8. just because i can't put my finger on the problem doesn't mean there ain't a problem

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> while i normally am the type who believes fillers serve purpose and are not pointless, i have to fully disagree when it comes to this chapter. i feel like it is the most fillery thing i have ever written, especially for this story, but after throwing a 10k chapter at you i feel like i need to divide things up somewhere so you're not all actually drowning in a sea of words. just know that this chapter is one of its kind and after this, things are going to take off, particularly to places i am SO excited about taking it (aka the parts of the story i've been itching to write since this idea came to me in august??? september???? what month is it anymore?????) and am so looking forward to sharing with you. i also think it is worth mentioning once again that i do not go to usc. i live on the opposite end of the country. all my knowledge on usc has come from student-written articles on knockoff odyssey websites, usc's official website, and google maps. take it with a grain of salt. 
> 
> please don't forget to take that quick second after reading to leave a comment before you resume regularly scheduled programming and let me know what you've thought of the chapter! any feedback is appreciated greatly and quite helpful for me, because in the words of high school musical, we're all in this together. chapter title comes from lost kings & tove styrke's 'stuck.' i am always lurking on @tributediaries so by all means come pop in, say hello, discuss your thg feels, the works. happy reading. xx

USC didn’t have very many home football games. Weekenders were not uncommon on campus; students and their concentrated groups of friends would head up north for the California or Stanford games, occasionally making a pseudo-weekender out of the UCLA game if it was away as well despite it only being twenty minutes up the road. Weekenders could also be slightly unrealistic depending on circumstance. It was never worth it if you couldn’t find a group of people to go with you on the trip, and unless you came strapped with cash or a trust fund, you had to pick and choose which game you dedicated a weekender to. Often times the climate on campus dictated which game earned the season’s title of official Weekender game, but it didn’t always mean that that game was most convenient.

Trojans were dedicated to their boys though, so home games, in all of their convenience, usually had massive turnouts. There was always a sea of cardinal and gold when games were on their turf, particularly concentrated in the student section of the Coliseum. If one had to guess, upwards of two thousand students crammed themselves into the same spot, many more sprinkled out across the stadium.

All of those people in such a large space; it _should_ have been easy to avoid any kind of conflicts that brought along tension and awkwardness. Yet the Colorado game was currently the most miserable of the season and it had absolutely nothing to do with the baking sun, which was somewhat of a rarity in October.  

It was as though the cracks appeared overnight. One minute, things were fine and the next, there were fracture lines all throughout the friendship Isabelle could have sworn was going to be _something_ , something that would be strong. She couldn’t talk too much, though. She was the one responsible for some of those fractures.

More than a week had passed since the fiasco at Webb with Alexander, and Isabelle was over it in the sense that she was completely over dealing with Alexander altogether. The anger subsided after a day or so, but Isabelle could hold a grudge like no other. She took her names carefully once she had reason to write them down, and even when she buried a hatchet, she made sure to leave herself a map should she ever need to find it again.

Dayo could tell when they met for coffee something was weighing on her conscious, asking her if things were okay once she’d came barreling into Starbucks like a woman on a mission and not stopping in her stride until she was practically on top of the table. Isabelle simply nodded her head, set her bag down and got in line for an iced coffee to take a breather and force herself to chill out.  

So Alexander dropped her like she was nothing more than dead weight the minute a pretty blonde came to his doorstep for god only knows what. So what? He was just another face in a sea of some forty-thousand odd people at USC, who cared? Two could play at the game of not caring. And that was exactly what Isabelle decided would be her course of action. The only way to keep it from happening again was to snuff out the fuse. If she really was such an undesirable way to spend the time, she simply wouldn’t give him any more of hers.

That’s exactly what she did throughout the week, purposefully sticking to the open lounges on her floor of Irani or Doheny if she wanted a library to study in to avoid any potential run-ins with Alexander. It hadn’t fazed her any in the slightest. In fact, things felt like they were going really well now that she could feel the lesser amount of weight in the friendships area.

Isabelle didn’t bring it up to Jackie or the other boys or even Jen and Leven, not seeing how any of it could possibly be their business. She was petty but she wasn’t looking for a fight. Live, learn, and let die. What she hadn’t considered, however, was the upcoming tailgating weekend. Now that there was less of a distinction where the boundaries of friend groups existed and they had all started to bleed together, there was overlap. Hanging out with Jen and Leven at a tailgate meant that by association, they would also be hanging out with a couple dozen fraternity brothers.

It completely slipped Isabelle’s mind that Alexander would be there until she spotted him.

He was leaning up against somebody’s car, arms folded over his chest as he talked to a blonde, the same blonde that Isabelle had stormed right past on the warpath out of the apartment.  This was the first real opportunity presented to Isabelle to actually get a look at the girl, Isabelle occasionally diverting her sights away from Leven to steal a glance or two. She was very pretty; tall, blonde, athletic build, the right kind of alluring that somebody like Alexander would be nothing more than melted ice in between her fingers.

If Alexander knew she had even arrived, it was unbeknownst to Isabelle. She was strategic in the way she avoided him, both physically and as a topic of conversation.

And it worked for a while, too, up until Mark started taking food off the grill.

“Come on, girlies!” Jen announced as she skipped over to the semi-circle of chairs under the tent, stopping beside Jackie’s and tugging her on the wrist. “Burgers are done.”

Isabelle stood up from where she had been sitting on Leven’s lap, taking a few steps to the side to wait on her. Jackie didn’t need to be told twice to leave, all but jumping out of her seat and heading back towards the food with Jen.

“Is everything okay with her?” Leven asked once Jackie was far enough out of earshot, readjusting her USC shirt so the fringe hem she had cut and created fell in the right spots. Isabelle looked back at Jackie before meeting Leven’s eyes, shrugging noncommittally. “Just seems like I can’t get her to make eye contact with me.”

Again, Isabelle shrugged, perplexity riddling her features. Truth be told, she had been much too consumed with ignoring Alexander to pick up on any odd social cues or body language from Jackie. “She might just have a lot coming up,” Isabelle offered. “We both know she starts to shut out the world when she has more than three things due in a week.”

Leven gave a half-hearted nod; she accepted Isabelle’s explanation but it was pretty clear that she didn’t believe it.

Smoke was lazily drifting upwards from the grill where Mark was currently taking things off of the grill and plating them, the waiting time only dragging out the number of people who stood idly around the fold-out table immersed in their pointless conversations while they prepared to pounce. Isabelle followed Leven over to her cooler, waiting back a few paces for Leven to shoo the frat boy she didn’t know the name of off the lid and get it opened.

“Go ahead, Belly,” Leven said as she took the lid off, gesturing downwards towards the open cooler.  

Isabelle bent down, balancing all of her weight in her ankles as she peered inside the cooler looking for a Diet Coke. Leven must have spent nearly ten dollars on ice, the amount still packed on top despite the brutal heat already melting through some of it and turning it into sitting water. She tried sifting through all of the Budlight and Deer Park for something with a little caffeine, her hand frozen and wet from all the searching.  

“Can I steal a drink?” A voice came from behind her, the ice water her hand was submerged in shooting straight through her veins. The question wasn’t directed towards her but considering the collective twist her insides did, it may as well have been. So much for the agenda of complete avoidance.

Isabelle could practically feel the weight of his shadow bearing down on her back while she looked for a drink at a much more accelerated pace. Fight or flight was starting to kick in, and for the sanctity of a tailgate, she was doing all she could to resort towards the latter. “Depends,” Leven replied cheekily. “You gonna compensate me for it?”

Alexander sighed in an exaggerated manner. “With another full year of my friendship, perhaps. Does that work for you, Bino?”

Isabelle stole a glance up at Leven to see her pretending to ponder the thought. “Mm,” she dragged out before she came to her conclusion. “Nah. What do you think, Iz? An acceptable trade?”

She finally spotted the silver cap for a Diet Coke, yanking it out of the ice without any care in the water that would splash out in the aftermath. In the same fluid motion, she straightened back up and dragged her hand down the length of the Coke bottle, shaking the condensation off. She glanced over her shoulder for a fraction of a second at Alexander, the flame of a bitter fire flaring up her temper. “Not a chance,” she said, voice edging with more hostility than she’d intended on.

Leven and Alexander’s relationship was basically comprised of ribbing with one another, poking their fun all while respecting the very obvious line in the sand. Clearly, Isabelle had just crossed the metaphorical line with her response, judging by the puzzled expression that slammed Leven right in the face. Her eyes screamed _what the fuck was that?_ at Isabelle, Isabelle not dwelling on it as she cracked the cap on her drink and twisted it off.

This was what her not caring looked like.

Alexander knew that in some capacity, he had fucked up. All he really knew was that Dayo had been waiting on her right about the time Lindsey had shown up at his door – a work of divine intervention – and she shot out of the room like a stray bullet, never to be seen again. He started to clue in that maybe, just maybe, something about his handling of the situation was less than ideal when he showed up at Leavey on Tuesday and Isabelle wasn’t at their table as per usual. What exactly he’d done to set her off, he wasn’t entirely sure.

Had she misread the entire situation? He didn’t peg her to be _that_ type of girl, especially not the type to whip out the blades and throw them at a picture of his face when the inevitable happened. Maybe he had taken it a step too far. He tended to do that a lot, especially when it came to girls.

The confirmation he needed was in the way Isabelle slipped right past him after her blunt delivery that felt like a jagged icicle right to the chest, her Diet Coke in hand as she likely stormed by to meet up with Jackie and Jen.

He glanced over at Leven, searching for some sort of answers. The two of them were friends. Maybe there was something he was simply missing that she knew and he didn’t. Unfortunately, she seemed to just as taken off guard as he felt, shrugging in confusion. “Don’t look at me,” she said in a low voice so only he could hear. “Maybe there’s just a planet in retrograde.”  

Even if he knew what that meant, he’d put lots of money on that _not_ being the correct answer.

As Mark brought things off the grill and onto the table, Alexander kept his sights closely trained on Isabelle to see what tells he could pick up on. She was something like a brick wall, totally closed off and unreadable as she angled herself in her small circle with Jen and Jackie so that he was fully on the outskirts.   

“Penny for your thoughts?” A smooth voice pierced right through his bubble of concentration, the familiar scent of perfume and sunscreen redirecting his attention back towards Lindsey.

Lindsey Vonn was exactly Alexander’s type. Blonde, athletic, more than a few brain cells to her name, funny, vey much go-with-the-flow and not the type who was looking for any sort of commitment out of him. She was the perfect fit for the kind of relationship Alexander was looking for. A former brother of his introduced them at some point over the summer when Alexander was back in Los Angeles for a few weeks. Lindsey immediately caught his eye due to the fact she was unlike a lot of the girls – a lot of the _people_ – that came floating into his orbit. There wasn’t much from him that she wanted, especially not on the whole relationship front. In fact, after a few times out with their mutual friends where they always wound up standing next to each other and talking, he discovered that she wasn’t interested in doing the whole dating thing anymore. Apparently, after a couple of really shitty prior relationships and skeletons in her closet that were still there and undealt with, jumping headfirst and getting involved in something new was not on her agenda.

That worked perfectly for Alexander, seeing as how the dating thing had never really worked for him in the first place.

The arrangement they had was casual. Purely physically, too; just releasing a little steam every now and again when Dayo wasn’t in the room or her suitemates were out. The sex was good, as was her company. Sometimes they’d hang out with their clothes on or go for dinner in the Village, maybe spend most of their time together if they were in a group of people, but he didn’t _feel_ anything for her. Lindsey checked off all the boxes when it came to the type of girl he was into, but she wasn’t the kind of girl that he usually dated. Those tended to be a little more unhinged and psychotic, just based off of his own terrible past experiences. It was like he fed off of a fight when he dated someone, practically picking out the very person that would make him wonder if he was only with them as a means of subconsciously punishing himself.

That’s why he felt it best to just keep things the way they were with Lindsey. Besides, why bother purchasing the cow when the milk came for free?

Their little friends with benefits arrangement was about three months in, both of them seemingly content in the repetitive and overall detached nature of it. Lately things had been more detached than anything, the semester starting to pick up for the both of them and leaving little time for their fun. It was why he had been surprised to see Lindsey at his door on Friday. She stayed busy, even more so than him considering it was volleyball season (she played for USC and was pretty damn good at it too). But any time he got with her, he took. When the waters were calm and things were good, he didn’t see a point in saying no.  

He also didn’t see a point in complicating things with Lindsey. Complicating it would only take away the fun of it all, and would turn it into the very thing he didn’t want to deal with. So he shoved the thoughts and theories relating to Isabelle back into a drawer as he smiled at Lindsey, bringing his water bottle up to his mouth to take a sip. “They’re not worth that much,” he diffused in a blasé manner.

Isabelle apparently didn’t take too well to being put in a corner even inside his brain, because as the afternoon rolled on, it was as though he noticed her more than he ever had before even with Lindsey standing right in front of him, sitting right in his lap and obstructing the view of Isabelle. Isabelle was busy pretending that he didn’t exist. Something about that picked away at him inside, fighting with himself to patch up all the holes that the itch kept scratching.

Every so often, he’d catch Leven’s line of sight from across the way. Leven, ever the social butterfly, looked miserable for once in her life. That worried Alexander. If Leven couldn’t confident her way through a situation then it meant there were snowflakes currently falling in Hell and any minute now, the moon would come crashing through the atmosphere. Whatever it was, it had something to do with Jackie.

Leven, on the other hand, didn’t know what in the fuck she could have possibly done. One minute, they were at Phi Kappa Psi and Jackie was coming up to her letting her know that she was leaving – the next, Leven had a massive on-and-off migraine over the weekend from warding off Jen’s attempts at drunk dialing (the universe’s kind way of thanking her, she supposed) and Jackie wasn’t making a joke about it in stats on Monday. Jackie was simply consumed in whatever it was she was doing on her laptop, Leven invisible to her otherwise.

Leven figured it was maybe just a fluke on Monday, but flukes didn’t happen two days in a row. Jackie didn’t acknowledge her on Wednesday either, even when she tried sending Jackie a few text messages during the lecture from her laptop. Her read receipts weren’t on, but Leven had the inkling that Jackie had indeed seen them judging by how she closed the laptop and put it away to take traditional pen-and-paper notes after the fourth message.      

She wanted nothing more than to know what she’d done so she could fix it somehow. The constant agenda of avoiding her that Jackie had apparently adopted only twisted more knots into Leven’s stomach. Hell, she was more than willing to apologize without knowing exactly what she’d done wrong, but it was a little hard to get a quick apology out when Jackie was busy steering clear of her at all costs.

The tailgate was something like the last-ditch effort for Leven to at least try. She knew they all would hang out at some point during the tailgate; Jack and Josh were fans of food they didn’t have to make themselves, and when she’d texted Isabelle on Friday, Isabelle said she was definitely planning to stop by. Jackie was not the type to fly solo at a tailgate – Isabelle was something like her safety net – and Leven would find the opportunity to say she was sorry for _whatever_. Maybe Jackie would even be over it already and things would revert right back to their normal.

Normal was far from where they were, though, Jackie seeming to go out of her way to avoid putting herself in a situation where she was alone or close enough to Leven that the risk of a conversation sparking up was in the realm of possibility. If Jackie wasn’t glued to Isabelle’s hip, then she was off flitting around with Jen, apparently taking advantage of all the movement Jen did as she flounced from person to person with very few moments of stillness. Even in the down moments when they were all together, Leven didn’t appear on Jackie’s radar at all.

All it did was drag Leven’s mood down. She tried her best to attach herself even on the outer limits of the conversation to little avail, eventually giving up and letting go of her optimistic high hopes when they got to the Coliseum and Jackie whispered for Isabelle to trade seats with her once she realized that she would wind up next to Leven, Isabelle sliding in next to her and offering Leven a bright smile as if that would duct-tape up the situation nice and neatly. Nothing about it comforted Leven, either – she knew Isabelle was undergoing her own shit, and the placating measure was about the equivalent of the pot calling the kettle black.  

So: there they were, the sun swollen in the sky and giving them little mercy from the heat as the Trojans did everything in their power to keep their winning score above Colorado’s, their heads barely above water, while tectonic plates in Leven’s new group of friends shifted them all into an awkward place where accidentally jumping on a crack in the pavement would shatter it all. It was a place that made her want to crawl out of her skin.

Truthfully, they all wanted to. Crawl out of their own skin and into that of somebody else just for a moment. Put the friendship on pause while they figured their shit out.

Life didn’t work like that though; it worked more like the giant clock on the million-dollar stadium. The time kept running and the cracks just kept spider-webbing their way out.   

* * *

It was just coffee.

That was what Jen kept telling herself as she paced the entrance of Ground Zero to the point where her tracks were well on their way to creating a rut in the pavement. _Just coffee. Just coffee. Just coffee. Just coffee with a friend. Just coffee with Josh. No need to panic, it’s just_

_coffee_

_you_

_moron._

One of her greater flaws was living life on a hairline trigger, susceptible to firing at any moment with even the slightest bit of pressure. The littlest of things set her off, things that most people didn’t bat an eye at.  None of her emotions were ever diluted when they came springing out of the shadows, but before Him, it had always been things like being really excited or really angry or even really upset. After Him was when being really anxious or really skittish or really depressed added into the mix.

It was rare for Jen to have no idea what she was doing with herself, but she was buried in her messages while she paced, eyes flying over the words in the hopes it would somehow appease the anxiety.

 

 **IMESSAGE**  
Josh(ward) Hutcherson  
Sunday

 ** _8:19PM_**  
I mean not to brag or anything  
but I do a stellar cover of Believe by  
Cher

Or best of both worlds by Hannah  
Montana

 ** _8:22PM_**  
HA I would pay big bucks to see you  
in a wig singing about your double life

Or just impersonating Cher, really

 ** _8:24PM_**  
I need a popstar name for that

Am open for suggestions

 _ **8:25PM**_  
Are we sticking to the Hannah formula  
where we rhyme a name with a state

 ** _8:26PM_**  
Obviously

 

 ** _8:28PM  
_**Alexis Texas????

 _ **8:29PM**_  
Pretty sure that’s the name of a  
porn star

 ** _8:31PM  
_**FOR REAL

 ** _8:32PM_**  
Yeah, look it up

Or don’t

 

 _ **8:33PM**_  
Yeah, jen, let me just set off USCsecure  
real quick

 _ **8:34PM**_  
You’re the one who doesn’t believe  
me

 ** _8:35PM  
_**How would you even know that????

 ** _8:36PM_**  
…u forget that I am friends with  
frat boys

 

 ** _8:38PM  
_**Oh, right

 ** _8:39PM  
_**Oh, what, girls can’t watch porn???

I believe in equality, Joshward

 ** _8:42PM  
_****JOSHUA

 ** _8:42PM_**  
Joshward has a better ring to it

 

 ** _8:43PM  
_**Whatever, morgan oregon

 ** _8:44PM  
_**Ooh, I like

What about Marilyn Maryland?

 _ **8:45PM**_  
Marilyn Maryland is the equivalent  
of just calling yourself Minnesota  
Minnesota – if you’re gonna be a  
tween sensation you’re gonna have  
to try harder than that

Now Dakota Minesota?? I’d stan

 ** _8:46PM_**  
Two states in one name is a big no-no  
How will the tweens know which state  
I am representing????

 

 ** _8:48PM  
_**Touche

Anna Louisiana?

 ** _8:50PM  
_**Heidi Hawaii???

 ** _8:51PM  
_**Pippi Mississippi?

 ** _8:52PM_**  
HELL YES

Pippi Mississippi is here to save music

 

 _ **8:53PM**_  
Can’t wait to catch her headlining  
@ Ground Zero

 ** _8:56PM  
_**Today, GZ, tomorrow Springfest

USC will never be the same

 

Monday

 

 _ **2:40PM**_  
Stopped and got GZ after class –  
the performance stage is calling  
your name, pippi 😉

 ** _4:23PM_**  
Once I get the tshirts with my face  
on them back from the printers, it is  
go time

They’ll name a milkshake after me

 

 ** _5:08PM  
_**That would be legendary, tbh

What would be in it????

 _ **5:12PM**_  
Not that I’ve thought about this  
extensively, but it’d be espresso, kit-kats,  
coconut and caramel

With rainbow sprinkles bc why the hell  
not

 _ **5:30PM**_  
I am no dentist but that sounds  
like a cavity waiting to happen

 ** _5:31PM_**  
“Pippi Missisippi’s Cavity in the Making”

That will be the name

 

 ** _5:34PM  
_**Truly genius

****

****

**_7:55PM  
_**Wanna hit up GZ tomorrow??

 ** _8:30PM_**  
You’re itching to try the Cavity in the  
Making, aren’t you

 

 ** _8:48PM  
_**Guilty as charged

 ** _8:51PM  
_**It’s fantastic

But yeah, we can! What time you  
thinking?

 _ **9:02PM**_  
I finish w/ class at 12 and then I have  
a break until 4 so any time between  
then

 ** _9:09PM_**  
Any way we could do it after 2?

 

 ** _9:13PM  
_**2:30 work???

 ** _9:15PM  
_**Excellent

See you then, Joshward

 

Tuesday

 

 ** _2:26PM_**  
Here!!!

 

 

Her eyes cast up again once she hit the bottom of the message thread, her thumb only scrolling up to empty grey space. She had no idea why she was early. Normally, Jen couldn’t manage to be early to something if it had the capabilities to save her own damn life. But of course, she was early today, a rock in a sea of people that were swarming in every possible direction as the panic started to build in her chest.

 _It’s just coffee_ , she told herself, chanting it to herself like it was the very mantra of gravity keeping her feet on the ground. _Not a date. Just coffee. There’s no reason to get so worked up. You are having coffee with a friend who happens to be a guy. It’s the same thing as having dinner with Dayo or studying in the library with Alexander._    

After Him though, things like that got infinitely more muddled.

Trust was shattered.

Lingering smells of gasoline on places and memories she’d revisit.

Heart guarded with barbed wire that sometimes cut her.

A bubble of hesitancy always building in her chest, threatening to pop and break her ribs and make it impossible to breathe.  

Something just as simple as going for coffee now stained with the same blood that had poured from the very wound He created when He shot her right in the chest.

The anxiety was starting to build the longer she waited – this was exactly why she hated being early, too much time in her head and keeping herself company – with Jen needing to physically stay moving so that dwelling on anything, be it a thought or a spot on the sidewalk, was impossible. She unlocked and relocked her phone so many times that the Emergency SOS feature came up, Jen stopping in her pacing only for a brief second to disarm the feature.

Should she text him again? No, that was too much. He was probably already on his way over and just hadn’t responded because he was close. She was early, too – they’d said 2:30. Maybe Josh was someone who didn’t show up until the time flipped right to 2:30. Punctuality was a concept some people were steadfast in practicing.

She just needed to see Josh in the flesh in order to fully take a breath and exhale all the way. Something about Josh’s presence was calming for her. Every conversation that they had grew a life of its own and hardly required any effort. He made her laugh and smile and feel at ease, which was something that she didn’t feel towards strangers right off the bat. Josh wasn’t necessarily a stranger, being friends with Dayo and all and having seen him once or twice talking to Dayo, but he hadn’t been any sort of fixture in her day-to-day up until this year. He hadn’t really been on her radar. Someone else had been responsible for that.

Her feet came to a stop in front of the Ground Zero sidewalk sign, phone reappearing in front of her face to check and see if a text message had slipped past her iron grip. No notifications.

 _Get your shit together, Lawrence_ , she scolded herself. _You’re being ridiculous._

Jen lifted her head, her sights trailing straight ahead. No one was walking her way, no one even in view. Just a blank, gaping space framed by brick walls and little trees that only serviced as decoration. She felt her shoulders fall a little as the shallow exhale pushed from her lungs.

“Jen! Hey!”

Her neck nearly broke at the pace she whipped around, following the sound of the voice addressing her. Josh was bounding towards her from the right, completely in her blind spot. He was smiling as he grew closer, one arm extended specifically to tuck her into a hug once she was within reach. “Hey,” she said, the relaxation spreading through her veins once her chin brushed over the top of his shoulder.

“You haven’t been waiting long, have you?” Jen shook her head as they pulled away from the hug, Josh’s hand resting on one of the straps of his bookbag. “I think it was my Uber driver’s first day in the city.”  

“In order to be an Uber driver in LA, it’s basically required that you have no bearings about you,” Jen joked.

“No kidding.” Josh moved closer to the door, his hand jutting out and wrapping around the handle. As he pulled it open, he made a small gesture for Jen to go ahead.

She bowed in quickly, Josh right on her heels. Ground Zero, while not in the hub of all the bright and shiny new things in the Village, was a campus favorite. It held the same purpose as any other coffee shop there on campus but with a little more personality. The dim lighting wasn’t always optimal for studying, but the black couches were practically renowned there on campus for their comfort. If you didn’t enjoy at least one moment sitting on those couches with your friends stressing about a group project or laughing over something dumb or even watching one of the evening performances on the building’s performance stage, it was hard to consider yourself having fully experienced USC. In Jen’s humble opinion, they also carried the best coffee on campus, simply because they never failed to appeal to her sweet tooth.

It wasn’t very busy, most people still in class at 2:30 or on a different side of campus that held the much more convenient Starbucks. The pair got in the rather short line, both of their sights up on the black menu board swirling in neon chalk with the specials. “Know what you’re going for?” Josh asked her after a moment of looking, nudging her slightly with his elbow poking into her arm.

She simply stared back at him with a blank look. “Cavity in the Making, duh.”

“You were serious about that?”

“I’m serious about _everything_.”

Josh’s eyes shifted back up towards the menu right as he snickered, Jen watching the smile unfurl over his lips. They slid down the line with each person that ordered without much more conversation. Jen finally wound up in front of the register, recognizing the barista as a girl named Tara whom she was fairly positive had been in one of her classes the previous year. She ordered her usual – vanilla ice cream with a shot of espresso, Kit-Kats and coconuts blended in and a caramel drizzle to top it off. She always had to ask about the rainbow sprinkles since they were rarely in stock (very few people actually liked the Funfetti Cake Shake) and of course wound up needing to pay extra for them.

Right as she went to hand the barista her student ID, Josh swooped in. “Nah, it’s on me,” he insisted.

Jen turned to shoot him a bewildered look. He must have been able to predict her next statement because he shook his head. “I asked you to hang out, I’m paying. Besides, these count as meal swipes and I’ve barely used any of mine this semester. They've gotta go somewhere.”

Jen was hesitant to let him do so – letting him pay automatically made the little arrow point towards date, but she didn’t have much of an opportunity to resist. By the time she’d concluded she wouldn’t let him pay for her ridiculously expensive drink, he had already frozen her out and taken her spot right in front of the card reader.

“Hunk of Burning Love,” Josh ordered while she stood off to the side and pouted. “With a shot of espresso.”

She felt her throat close up, the wind effectively stolen from her chest.

No longer did she care about him paying for her or trying to talk herself out of an impending anxiety attack over something outrageously trivial. The only other person she’d met at USC who even liked the Hunk of Burning Love shakes was Him. It was as though she was a rubber band, having been pulled to the brink and released so hard that the snap nearly jolted her off her balance.

She didn’t realize that her ears were ringing or that something about her looked rather off to surrounding people until Josh had said her name a few times, his hand resting around her shoulder. It was like being burned by fire, startling her and causing her to jump back a little as reality flooded back around her. The expression on his face changed, all of the light-heartedness leaving to make room for the serious. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Jen swallowed as she gasped for air, feeling vaguely like a fish pulled straight from the water. “Yeah, I’m just…gonna run to the bathroom.”

She barely gave him any chance to respond, halfway across the room by the time he had registered her departure.

The lights were much brighter in the bathroom than they were out in the main room, Jen beelining for the sink and her hand slamming the faucet handle upwards. A stream of water came bursting out that Jen immediately started to splash on her face. It was how she typically brought herself out of it, the cold droplets of water sliding down her cheeks taking away from any of the puffiness that would come about if she was crying and shocking her back to reality.

 _Josh is not Him_. She met her own eyes in the mirror as she forced air down into her lungs and let her chest fall each time she exhaled. The blue irises staring back at her were perhaps one of the only familiar things about herself that she could rely on. Always a constant. No matter the emotion she was suppressing behind them or the words she was screaming with them or the panic that overtook them or even the flood of tears that drowned them, her eyes were always blue. That would never change. It was the things that didn’t change that she clutched onto the tightest whenever she felt the world tip from underneath her. _Lots of people like chocolate, banana, and peanut butter combinations. This is not a date. We’ve been over this. You can’t just freak out like that because all it does is send you skittering twelve steps back and drive everybody else away. You can’t let this continue to run and ruin your life even if the cut is still very much open. You can’t keep letting Him win._

Jen took another deep breath, her hand still trembling as she tucked her hair behind her ear and reached for a paper towel to dry off her face. God, she felt like some kind of feral animal, and she was sure she had looked the part too.

“You’ve done enough damage,” she muttered to herself as she wiped the water from her cheekbones. “Let me have just one thing.” She didn’t feel it selfish to ask for, just _one_ fucking thing. Not after all of the things, especially those of herself, that she’d given Him.

She had no idea how long she’d been in the bathroom gripping to the counter and splashing water on her face, but apparently it had been longer than she’d gauged. When she reemerged from the bathroom, Josh was already sitting down on one of the black couches holding both of their milkshakes.

_It is just coffee._

As she slowly strode towards the couches, Josh’s eyes found her and the concern look shaped each of his features. She saw the question perched on the edge of his teeth, flickering in his eyes, preparing to launch from his tongue and into the air. So she waved her hand around in dismissal, summoned as much of her façade back to the surface and plopped down on the couch next to him.

“All good,” she reassured him as she reached for her milkshake. “Just like the Cavity in the Making.” She prayed that the faint smile starting to break through the clouds of concern was indicator of him buying it.

It was a little too late for the power of wishes to turn the course of things around, though. The invitation for the slightest bit of awkwardness to open the door had been delivered, and it hadn’t needed any further convincing in coming right on inside to make itself comfortable. And if she knew her own damn luck, it wouldn’t be going away any time soon, either. _Apparently just one fucking cup of coffee is indeed too much to ask for._


End file.
